MTG thread

Punko said:

People can't shuffle well enough irl to generate the kind of random seen in MTGO. I've drawn a playset of cards in my opening 7 several times online, and I've also drawn 14 lands in a row in an 18 card limited deck .. of course thats not going to happen in real life where most people shuffle badly, few people do riffle, and pretty much noone does 8+ good riffles, which is what you need to randomize it statistically.

Click to expand...

Yea, been a while since I've poked around these parts - but yea, way back when I saw someone post results of testing shuffling with a casino-shuffler and posting similar results to the MTGO one that "feels" odd.

So reality is we don't shuffle well enough RL, so it feels odd, when it really is less odd.

It's all part of the micro vs macro thing too. In an individual game variance is a pretty big factor, but over a lot of games less so. There's a reason matches are best of 3 and often at larger events some of the big matches at the end are often best of 5.

Aaaaaaaaaand it still makes it a shitty resource system or system of randomness to a game, there are plenty of examples of "randomness" for those with their dicks hard for it that play out far better in other games. Just look at tabletop games for a million different ways randomness plays out to add and not take away from the game. MtG receives the hindsight of retardation that comes with 30 years of it being the norm. If it had come out in the past few years nobody would give it a second look because its just a terrible design

Enzee said:

err.. besides the fact that they aren't even comparable genres, the closest analogy between them would be your teammates in solo queue. You can get a shit teammate or a disconnect and you lose despite winning your lane. There's always some element that is at least somewhat out of your control. It lets players who are in denial about their skill have an excuse, which lets them enjoy the game more and contributes to the overall popularity.

Look, I hate the mechanic as well. Mana screw/flood games tilt me super hard, but I at least understand why they exist and the designers haven't tried to eliminate them for 25 years. I've been trying to find a card game that has lower variance, good strategy options and still appeals to a large enough audience, but I haven't found one better than mtg arena yet. Gwent was close when I first started playing it, but then they made some huge changes that kinda ruined that. I'll check it out again in a few months, when they launch the big 'back to the drawing board' update they've been working on for awhile.

Click to expand...

The genre doesn't matter. Forget about the other players, they don't matter.

The point is....... you need to get a resource to function in both games. Right? Right.

If getting that resource would be random in those games, it would be just as awful. Its why MtG will NEVER have that kind of mass appeal. It happens at almost every event that someone in the top 8 goes down at least a game because of it, and its incredibly hard to get out of that hole once you're in it. If that kind of random fuckyou moment happened completely out of the players control for any popular esport game that decided a match(and pro tour decks are fine tuned for every single mana percentage for 99.9% of decks, so we can assume they are built correctly), that esport would be dead and people would stop watching. If someone watched a weekend of (insert any game here) to see a crucial game in the finals decided because of this kind of shitty mechanic, there would be outrage.

At the very least, the mulligan system could be creatively reworked to eliminate the mana screw part of the game and at least kill half the elephant in the room.

Versus and the WoW TCG both did things the way you seem to advocate, in fact WoW was largely MTG with every card being land in addition to whatever it was and the ability to directly attack creatures. Both games were heavily pushed, both games tried very hard to have a professional tour to compete with/surpass MTG, and both games end up failing. Versus had virtually no casual play and WoW just never got particularly popular despite it's obviously wildly popular IP.

thoughts from some of you fella on a largeish trade, guy has a signed SP candleabra of tawnos, he's wanting a trop,savannah and bayou.. im iffy on pulling the trigger for it or not

I wouldn't make that trade. You're on the losing end on both value and playability unless your duals are revised and look like they went through the washing machine.

is there a counter offer i should suggest to him?
just the trop and bayou? or trop & savannah?

Sterling said:

Versus and the WoW TCG both did things the way you seem to advocate, in fact WoW was largely MTG with every card being land in addition to whatever it was and the ability to directly attack creatures. Both games were heavily pushed, both games tried very hard to have a professional tour to compete with/surpass MTG, and both games end up failing. Versus had virtually no casual play and WoW just never got particularly popular despite it's obviously wildly popular IP.

Click to expand...

False dichotomy.

They didnt fail because of mechanics, but because their target audience already had a ton of money already invested in cardboard cards in mtg and the space has been very hard to support blockbusters. Shit, the Hearthstone cards had a ton of the same card art (below), mechanics (weapons/deathrattle etc) same names, tapping armor to reduce damage etc that all transferred from WoW tcg. Even though the skeleton of Hearthstone was ripped right from the WoW tcg it had its huge success because of a) accessibility being online and B) hitting an entirely untapped new audience to ccg's who were not already so invested.

And lets face it, magic online is a giant outdated pile of shit that has always looked like some open source semester project. MtG has always been incredibly limited in the fact that you had to go play with smelly nerds on Friday nights at a certain time versus any hour of the day from the comfort of your own home. MtG has peaked where HS is just scratching the surface of the potential. Hence wotc trying again with their failed Duels games to use Arena to copy as much of HS as they can.

Won't argue about magic online. You'd think after all these years they'd actually pay their devs and programmers and hold on to the good ones for more than months before they leave for greener pastures.

Genjiro said:

The genre doesn't matter. Forget about the other players, they don't matter.

Click to expand...

Yes.. they do, because one is a 5v5 game and the other is a 1v1 game. You can't just look at the 'resource' system of both games and try to make a direct comparison. Mobas are not resource management games. They are reflex and strategy game. Just because both games have 'resources' does not mean they are comparable in any way, shape or form. The amount of mana you have is not the same as the amount of gold you get in LoL. Being ahead 5% in gold can win a game. Being ahead 6 lands to 5 does not necessarily mean anything.
MOBAs add their version of RNG in how other people react to situations. Ever hear some pro say it was 'unlucky' the enemy jungler, or whoever, was in a specific area? Because they won't be 90% of the time, but they just happened to get the 10% chance that the player walked over there for some arbitrary reason.

You are acting as if random outcomes make games unpopular, as if poker doesn't exist as a popular game. Or that the games that specifically eliminated these problems haven't crashed and burned, consistently, for decades. Yes, nobody enjoys when it happens to THEM, but many players do enjoy when it happens to their opponent, even if they don't admit it consciously. Everyone enjoys winning, on some level, even when it happens from their opponent getting mana screwed. Taking away those outcomes means bad players win less, which makes them enjoy the game less, which leads to the game failing.

I personally believe there is still a sweet spot that has less RNG then magic/HS, while still having enough that casual players won't be frustrated at never winning, but I haven't found that game yet. Again, Gwent was the closest at one point, but not currently. Until then, MTG is still the best imo, as the strategic depth you get from having instants and doing things on your opponent's turn is so huge compared to its closest competitors.

Strossus said:

thoughts from some of you fella on a largeish trade, guy has a signed SP candleabra of tawnos, he's wanting a trop,savannah and bayou.. im iffy on pulling the trigger for it or not

Click to expand...

Are these revised duals? Are they SP, MP, HP?
Being signed doesn't add much value to cards, overall, unless you are the specific audience for them. In other words, they are worth less except to the few people that they are worth more to, if that makes sense. Most vendors just mark down a signed card one notch (such as, NM to SP), for example.

There's too many variables here to give an exact counter offer. The Candelabra can vary from 500 to 1k depending on condition. If it's actually SP, before the signature, then it'd be somewhere around 800-950 range, so the trop + bayou (if they are both in great condition) would be fair. If the duals are a bit beat up and the candelabra is almost perfect (only the signature is bringing it down to SP) then all 3 is reasonable. Etc.. You get the idea.

Holy shit, you are caught up in the semantics and missed the point entirely.

OK WHAT IF WHEN YOUR MANA WAS SUPPOSED TO TIC UP SOMETIMES IT DIDNT BECAUSE WHEEEEEEEEEEE RANDOMNESS AND YOU DIDNT HAVE MANA TO CAST A TEAM FIGHT WINNING SPELL?

Better? If not, Im not going to argue it with you anymore as you seem to have a raging boner for randomness just for the sake of it. In poker you dont need some retarded arbitrary resource to play your cards if say you got lucky and drew flush draw. The randomness of it is fine because the RESOURCE part of mtg is not in poker. Just because its been around doesnt mean its good, its usually because it was the first of its kind....the same way people continue to argue for the dumb shit that was in Everquest/UO that most people hated because well, its whats been around forever and we liked it so get off my lawn. Arguing for randomness is ok when it ADDS to the game. In Gloomhaven it ADDS to the game because the monsters do random things every turn and it changes the dynamic of the board and adds a challenge which you are ABLE to deal with. Capiche? If not idk what to tell you.

People still love games like EQ/UO for sure, and they will always continue to be niche games the same way mtg will be in the very near future (if its not already, its death knell sounded years ago) and the future is not in cardboard cards with bad design which forces you to interact physically with smelly kids with glitter in their hair (actual kid from my local Friday night mtg in college).

If wotc had any brains, they would have pushed mtg into the esport arena and revised the stupidity inherent in the design, but we know they love to sit on blockbuster franchises with their dicks in their hand and get passed up by upstarts every year. Arena is still a pile of shit the same way Duels was.

Welcome to the discussion, try reading and catching up next time.

a_skeleton_03 said:

I read every post.

Click to expand...

Then I guess reading comprehension is not your strong suit.

Genjiro said:

Holy shit, you are caught up in the semantics and missed the point entirely.

Click to expand...

No, I'm really not. I'm pointing out that you are looking at a very small portion of each game, without regards to the overall picture, and trying to make direct comparisons. I assure you I understand your point, because I used to share it.

Let's say you are playing limited and you keep a 2 land hand, with 5 spells that all cost 3+ mana, you have about an 80% chance to draw a 3rd land by your 3rd draw. I'm assuming any land works here and you don't need a specific color. 80% is pretty high, but that's still a 20% chance you fail to do so and start getting mana screwed.

In poker the best starting hand (AA) is only an 80/20 favorite against most hands (other than an Ax hand, where it's about an 85-90% favorite). Over time, you will win a ton with AA, but on an individual hand you still have about a 20% chance to lose in a heads up situation.

The end result is similar. That's the only part that you can compare. The individual mechanics of the different games don't translate to each other. Yea, not being able to use an ability randomly in LoL would suck, obviously. Getting mana screwed sucks, yes, obviously. But, you can't remove the mechanic and assume it improves mtg just because it removes the occasional feel bad moment. It's not a net zero situation, because someone (your opponent) benefits from that mana screw. While it removes YOU feeling tilted, it decreases the opponent's enjoyment as well. As counter-intuitive as it seems, these things increase the overall enjoyment of the game. It's just that the people benefitting from it don't realize and they don't say anything about it. When some casual scrub wins his FNM because the two best players he faced both got mana screwed/flooded against him, they don't say 'thank god for mana screw!' they are just happy they won. They might feel a little empathy for their opponent when it happens, but they don't just say 'nah, i didn't deserve to win, here you take the prize'.

Like I said above, I used to have the EXACT same opinion you do of these mechanics. Heck, I still don't like them, I just understand they are necessary evil. When the original WoW tcg came out, I thought the base game was brilliant and tried to get friends to play it. Alternatively, I wanted to make a variant of mtg where you can play any card face down as any basic land, and just having all non-basics in your deck. Neither those ever caught on.

You can make as many logical arguments about why the mechanics suck (and I agree, individually, they do) but the results have shown that you have to have sufficient randomness or the game fails. Removing, or drastically reducing, screw/flood in mtg would move it too far into the realm of chess. Then, the best players would win 85-90% of the time (instead of the 65-70% currently) and the average player would get frustrated. There is no good way to add random effect cards, like HS, into the game to replace that loss, either. Draw and matchup RNG isn't enough, we already have them. If you can come up with some other form of randomness that fits into MTG's structure, while keeping the highest winrates around 70-75%, and eliminating mana RNG, then you would have something. But, you can't just say 'the game would be better if you simply removed mana screw' that statement is not correct and is very short sighted. It SOUNDS good, because no one enjoys when they get mana problems, but the end result would actually hurt the game.

Uh, Ive played mtg a bit in my time. I'm bored, its late, so here you go, storytime.

In one of the very first mentions in Scrye about MtG hot spots waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in prolly 93-94, they mentioned the dorm I was living in at WVU, Stalnaker Hall. It got a shout out as one of the first major places MtG was being played by a lot of people, probably would find 10 to 25 or so college students playing there in the common areas nightly. Black Lotuses used to get traded in my dorm for pizzas (they were worth about the price of a starter deck) and when it made it to unlimited people thought you were insane to buy one when the price shot up to 25-50$. P9 were common tournament prizes for the store I traveled to in Washington, PA for tournies in those days. Every game casually was played like the rules stated, for ante. And cards like Contract from Below etc were the bomb cards to build decks around. Once the price kept going up, ante died out and you had to spend money to buy cards instead of trading back peoples good cards they lost in ante for better cards like duals etc. Last year I finally sold my alpha lotus and beta mox sapp I held on from those days for 13k right down the road here in Maitland, FL. Yep never played this magical card game before.

Barely missed out a few times on top 8s in that region when it was by far the hardest region in the country to qualify in, unfortunately never had the testing groups in little ole WV in those days and Pittsburgh was just too far to travel to. Lucky ass people in the southwest Alaska etc got to make ptqs with barely double digit fields to compete against. Anyway, in Pittsburgh you had the CMU team with Randy Buehler, Mike Turian, Nate Heiss etc (CMU Blue, draw go, all that shit).....played versus them many times. Turian was easily the nicest of the bunch. And then you also had guys like Pat Chapin to the west coming out of the Michigan/Ohio Valley region, and they were all at every ptq. I can tell you old man stories of people yelling "judge!!!" every 15 minutes or so to deck check Chapin because vs a field of 200+ people in Columbus almost all playing High Tide he was running Jank with 8 main deck red blasts (4 red elemental and 4 pyro)...it was hilarious. So a_skeleton_03, I 100000% guarantee I've played a hell of a lot more magic than you and far more competitively as well, these days? Just for fun.

Anyways, having played on and off for decades (mostly off in the times during the heyday of EQ with the Blizzard guys, WoW etc) still doesnt change the fact that the mana base of the game is and always has been a poorly implemented mechanic and its still a love-hate relationship because the game is one I love...... but there's potential missed out on bigtime, but thats the MO of wotc. Granted, mtg was the first, so hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but it could at the very least be reworked.

And Enzee, I do understand your point. I guess I don't see the problem with the best players winning more, it would make people step up their games and add more skill like chess. Agree to disagree I guess, because as I said, if other e-sports games had a random element as debilitating as mana screw (again forget semantics just make up whatever stupid idea you want) happen in them, nobody would invest their time to watch dumb shit like that happen, which is just one part of the reason MtG has stagnated and lost players over the years (imo). The viewers of esports *want* to watch highly skilled competitors battle where the best man wins, not lady luck. Poker doesn't have that random element and the best guys consistently end up at the final table. I also like your workarounds you came up with, I think something could have been done similarly.

Anyways, there is plenty of randomness in the game with your draw and outside of that even among pros there are very different opinions of the viability of specific cards. And Yessss! As you allude to, EVERYTHING ELSE in mtg is superior to other card games which is why I still play it even as frustrating as it is (even the artwork, which is huge for me because Im an artist). It's probably too late at this point to fundamentally change how the game is played, but at the very least a change to the mulligan system would go a long, long way to making the game not only more entertaining but watchable as well, which is what it needs if its ever to make it to a true esport which just has an astronomical growth rate. Why WotC would not want to hop on that gravy train is beyond me. Outside of some tabletop gaming, everything is moving digital, and it makes me fear for the longevity of mtg given wotc and how they are always a step or three behind the times. Also lastly, idk, I *hate* winning when my opponent gets mana hosed...I feel bad because I'd rather lose to someone who drafted a great deck or made a play I wasn't expecting, and on the flip side of course winning in the same fashion.