Maro on BFZ

The problem isn't that some will be better than others, that's natural and expected. The problem is that they feel the need to make some cards, even rare cards, bad on purpose for no reason than to make the good cards look better in comparison. It's a way to pad the card count by funneling people into a more limited number of good cards and an extension D&D 3.5's "ivory tower design", rewarding system mastery by intentionally creating trap options for new players.

That's why it's shit.

He didn't say the entire blocks were mistakes or that the lore was bad. Only that players, especially new players, struggled with specific aspects of them. Which is ironic given his offhanded assumption that ivory tower design is good when it is the definition of fucking new players over.

>Time Spiral was shit because it brought back too many old mechanics and had too many in-jokes that flew over new players' heads

>Make the players do something they inherently want to do, not something you, the game designer, force them to do.
>If your theme isn't common, it isn't your theme.
>Every set is someone's first set.
>There are different types of complexity, and we have to monitor each type.
>When returning to a world, you have to return to the things that players loved about it the first time you visited.

Those are actually just all solid lessons, and magic will probably be better off in the long run for them.

>his offhanded assumption that ivory tower design is good
wtf ru talkin about m8

I think MaRo took away the wrong lesson from BFZ, and the Return to Innistrad suffered for it.

The reason people hated BFZ lore was because it was full of forced gloom and doom drama about a boring conflict that's been done to death in MTG. We already have the Phyrexians and many, many sets of them invading and terrorizing planes. The Eldrazi are just like the Phyrexians except way less interesting and way more cliche.

Originally Return to Innistrad was supposed to focus on the parts of Innistrad that didn't get a lot if screen time before. Distant coastal havens and the deep reaches of the wilderness. A set about a prosperous fantasy renaissance society (that's not constatly under attack by undead creatures) could be really flavourful and interesting, both mechanically and visually.

Instead though, we got what was essentially a retcon, backpedaling past every story development that happened last block because apparently the status quo is god now. And don't forget the forced drama and cliche evil invasion storyline. Gotta have that or else the Jacetice League would have nothing to do.

I stopped playing before phyrexia and just got back into the game with soi, reading back through the lore I missed made eldrazzi seem like watered down phyrexia.

Again, he didn't say the whole block was bad. Just that from the perspective of a new player it could be overwhelming due to the number of mechanics.

He said not all rare cards can be good. The premise underlying that assumption is that some of the cards have to be bad, and it's been said elsewhere that they do this on purpose. That is ivory tower because new players won't understand which trap option cards should be avoided while "enfranchised" players will know to throw them in the trash.

I must have misunderstood what he meant, I assumed that when he said they'd make some bad legendary creatures he meant they would all be compared and people would find some worse than others.
It is fair to note though that all we got was a single sentence on that bit and its hard to make a definitive opinion in either direction about what he meant.

Except Shadows over Innistrad is actually good, though.

>Only that players, especially new players, struggled with specific aspects of them

this legislating for retards shit is consolising mtg for chads, tyrones and beckys

>chads
>tyrones
I'm familiar with thos two, robot, but what the fuck is a becky? Isn't it a stacey?

Who?

>chads, tyrones and beckys
Explain each one of these player archetypes.

>doesn't mention how bad DTK was

shit article

Who else thinks 2-blocks are complete shit ?

>kamigawa
>timespiral
>lorwyn
>mistakes

I must have shit taste, because I fucking loved those blocks.

You loved it because you could handle the mechanics. New players couldn't, so they were mistakes.

I didnt love kamigawa but now when you look at EDH its better than specialy designed commander sets

Time spiral is just the best set aside from mirrodin.

Wasn't Time Spiral one of the single most popular sets ever?

>timespiral and lorwyn were mistakes because they only appealed to enfranchised players
>all these "my favorite set" posts
fucking reading comprehension

So a set's success is measured by how well new players can handle it?

a) Maro isn't even talking about success, he's talking about mistakes in design and design philosophy, like he always does
b) yes, you mongoloid. turning away new customers his how you make an unsuccessful product. He states about timespiral
>For the first time ever, tournament attendance was going up and sales were going down.

Not true. MaRo has directly stated that he purposely designs bad cards so that players feel good when they figure out what cards are good. This is a known part of his design philosophy.

My first set was timespiral and I had no problem understanding it. Cards with old mechanics literally told you what they did. As for the flavor/fluff, it felt like I was catching up with years of MtG lore that I had missed out on, and that was cool as shit.

On the note of Kamigawa:
>By making all of the rare creatures legendary, I guaranteed that we'd have to make some bad legendary creatures, because all of the rare creatures can't be good.
This is a problem with ivory tower design, not a problem with the legendary creatures.

...

To be fair, though, MaRO is the same nitwit that has stated that literally every expansion from here to infinity will be about the Jacetice League's adventures.

Except Lorwyn was literally my first set. It came out right when I started, so more or less all of the cards I was buying were a mix of Time Spiral and Lorwyn.

Is it really just 'marketing' that we're stuck with the Jacetice League? Or is it a Lightning situation? Because I don't mind seeing recurring characters and shit, I just cannot stand Chandra.Sociopathic firecunt

>I posted a Ren and Stimpy image. That makes your post incorrect.

I'm curious if they map to Johnny, Timmy, and Spike somehow

...

>axes (the plural of "axis")
>I was sitting across from an employee who was far less experienced, and the intricate web of tribal interactions was mind-melting to them.
Really? Both contempt for and pandering to your readership in the span of three sentences? And people continue to read this shit?

>People who are better than me
>People who are different from me
>People who I act differently around

There's a difference between understanding how something works and understanding if something is good or bad.
Ivory tower design is compatable with making things understandable to new players.

>I was sitting across from an employee who was far less experienced, and the intricate web of tribal interactions was mind-melting to them.

Who the fuck runs Goblin Wizard tribal in Lorwyn, and splashing both warriors and humans? This is a purely bullshit story, it has to be.

How much of a halfwit was this person sitting across from MaRo, the Whiny Autist himself? I have legitimately never had as much fun playing Magic as I did back in my boarding school dorm when Lorwyn came out, and we had over a dozen people all of whom were running tribal decks. Playing both duels, as well as everything from Emperor to Pentagram/Gem, and you knew that So-and-So was the best merfolk playing in the school, while What's-His-Name ran a killer Giant deck along with some Elemental jank as a second deck, and then there's me, running mono Green Goblins and mono Black Goblins, and then there's That-Other-Guy that runs an Elf deck and a Treefolk deck. But don't forget Fag-Man with his rushdown Faeries, or Molester-Man with his Kithkin deck!

Well, given there are no humans in the Lorwyn block, yeah, it is bullshit.

I could do his job better. He's had years to get this right. Oh, one of the most recent sets was trash? No shit? Maro and Wizards deliver mediocrity, after constantly rejecting calls for simple things like reprints.

>races went first as there were more of them
But... that's not true.

>Races
Elementals
Elves
Faeries
Giants
Goblin
Kithkin
Merfolk
Treefolk
Changelings

>Classes
Soldiers
Wizards
Rogues
Warriors
Shaman
Clerics
Druids
Archers
Knights
Assassins
Changelings

>race: Fluid
>class: Druid

Who is this?

No idea what you mean about Fluid, but Morningtide has the Blightsoil Druid, Heritage Druid, and of course the Gilt-Leaf Druid. Plus, it feels a little awkward to list Changelings as a seperate class, because every changeling also qualifies as a druid. Or a merfolk. Or a cleric. Or a Human Child.

And a Mutant Ninja Turtle.

*Citation needed

>How much of a halfwit was this person sitting across from MaRo, the Whiny Autist himself?
Well, it was a woman, so there's that. Otherwise he wouldn't have suddenly starting referring to an individual in the plural halfway through the paragraph.

Basically any angel except Aurelia, Teysa, Kiora, or Gisa.

Only one of those is an angel

That's because that's what Creative's decided they're doing (and likely Brand has forced them to do so that they have Recognizable Characters)

Yeah, I realized that afterward.

List of MTG Fluid Druids:
>Teysa
>Kiora
>Gisa
>Basically any angel except for Aurelia

>I could do his job better
>constantly rejecting calls for simple things like reprints.

How much you value that second bit shows that no, you couldn't. Stupid fuck.

>muh nostalgia

Tribal a shit.

>obvious simplification of the story from eight years ago
>oh no he got the exact combinations wrong, the story is bullshit!
Also, it's a lot more complicated when you're doing sealed, which is what you're doing at a prerelease. When you built your goblin deck, you didn't have to include some faeries and elves due to only having six packs to work with because sealed.

>Start out during Odyssey
>Love all the crazy graveyard shenanigans

>Play during Kamigawa
>Love the idea of the Legendary Theme and Support

>Play during Lorwynn
>Just great fun all around.

>Play during Time Spiral
>Absolutely adore the set specifically because of all the things he mentioned

If he called out Onslaught too, that would have been 5/5 of my favourite sets.

I mean, I get that Every Set Is Someone's New Set, but does that really mean we cannot have old things ever again?

No, it means we can't have the wonderful crazy batshit amount of stuff Time Spiral had ever again, except in supplemental products.
They could do Time Spiral 2 as a Conspiracy type deal.
It really was the best block, but I can honestly understand why it'd be confusing as all fuck to people who hadn't been in the game for a while.

>Aurelia
>not a Fluid Druid

Time Spiral was my first block, I don't know what other people struggled with.

...

I think he missed (or neglected to mention) that the other layer to the BFZ problem is that it returned to the less-popular ROE setting, but didn't include the ROE-style gameplay that the enfranchised players liked, so no one was happy.

As someone who started in the Time Spiral/Lorwyn era, I agree that they were needlessly complicated. They're some of my favorite sets, and they were still fun enough to get me into the game, but board stalls back then were the fucking worst.

>Aurelia
>not best girl
How can a man have such shit taste?

I really wanted to like it, but I feel underwhelmed when I compare it to Innistrad 1.

Who is this fluid druid?

>usurpers detected

wasn't it an "expert" set? fuck the newbs god damn they can play their core sets

Did YOU start with a core set, or did you start with whatever was the cool new set that just came out?

>with whatever was the cool new set that just came out?

This one and if you are too retarded to understand simple information you can go play with duplos.

The point is that nobody actually starts with the core sets, they start with the actual sets.
And for someone starting out, yes, Time Spiral was a whole shitload of confusing, because there were so many mechanics in there and so many weirdass one-off creatures that - while the words make sense - it's hard to understand WHY. Why does Cloudchaser Kestrel make things white, and why would you want to do that? Why does Cyclopean Giant make things swamps when it dies?
And on top of that, it's quite possible to end up with almost every card in a pack having a different keyworded ability, and that's kind of a lot of information to take in at once

Everything is a mistake for this filthy kike.
And it is because he's playing us from a marketing standpoint. In activism, politics and marketing, promises of change are more valuable than change itself.

There is a block where tourny numbers went up, and sales went down. Its a problem with your advertising is working and your product isnt selling.

I agree with him on the Zendikar thing. It seemed moderately interesting until they focused too hard on the Eldrazi. I hope we never ever go back.

I can't understand why they care so much about fucking over their return customers in favor of pandering to new players, but yet refuse to print good cards. How many people start to get into it, want to build their own deck, see the price tag on the cards they need from 5+ years ago and say "fuck that"?

A lot if people stay kitchen table for their time in the game. I know my nephew just plays precons with his friends at school

Chad plays because the game is popular, he has lots of dispossably income and he got bored of Call of Duty.
Tyrone plays because he can sell the cards Chad leaves in the table after every draft for drugs and playing casual magic while stoned is actually fun.
Becky plays because she wants to fuck both Chad and Tyrone, preferably at the same time.

I'm glad they admitted to the mistake of BfZ. That gives me hope that if they ever revisited Kamigawa, they wouldn't outright scrap the very Japanese flavor of it in favor of a completely pop culture Japanese flavor.

I'm a bit confused about Odyssey block. Me and my friends loved the hell out of that block, and all the graveyard nonsense.

Lorwyn I can understand. The switch to a focus on job classes rather than races was kind of weird, when Onslaught pulled it off nicely (some colors focus on race, others on jobs). But I think Onslaught also succeeded by not being completely invested in tribal themes, whereas it seemed unavoidable in Lorwyn.

Bfz was my 2nd orerelease and the first one i built my own deck, i went 3-1. If the numbers on the cards werent either insignifigant or 1hit ko the set would have been fine.

If he ever calls Onslaught a mistake I'm quitting until he leaves WotC.
Onslaught was the perfect combination of intro-level magic, with powerful spells, combat tricks, card interactions, library manipulation, combos and rules hell situations.

You could teach someone to play magic entirely with ONS block cards and afterwards the only deck they wouldn't be able to pilot competently would be Dredge, the basic functions of everything else are in there.

MaRo is the mistake.

I bet it's all Torment's fault.
You know, for giving black some fucking power.

Imagine how underpowered black would be compared to the rest if Torment had never happened.

There's a thing no one is getting: the only thing WotC cares about is money. Fuck your nostalgia, fuck your interesting sets, fuck your creative designs, etc. They're money vampires.

Fuck Maro and WotC in general. All those sets we love are memories, all those cool cards are never going to get reprinted. We're stuck with the Jacetice League, awful flavor and 1 or 2 "good" cards per set.

Also, remember they only test for standard, sealed and draft, so fuck your modern and legacy, only new players have money.
>but muh modern masters
Fuck you too.

Not among new players, which means it was a failure :^)

>Start out during Urza's
>Nothing will ever compare

Nothing compares to you.

Was meant for

>get (you)
>it was for someone else
kill me

>only new players have money
This is what puzzles me the most.
The average Commander deck at my LGS is worth $2k+, there are dozens of players and everyone has at least three decks, they buy every precon that contains alt art or quirky new gameplay modes.
There's 50+ local Legacy players, they casually buy boxes if the new cards they want aren't in store because online shopping/trading with grognards is "too much trouble".

And T2 players? They entirely stopped showing up because Jace was too expensive but while they were around they didn't buy shit other than singles.

Noobs don't buy shit, they don't have money. Casuals buy shit, alot of shit, but they buy it at Wal Mart/Target and don't care if Thoughtseize may be in their boosters they most probably will think it sucks. Commander and Legacy players have money and they spend it indiscriminatedly.

It's just false numbers from a shit marketing department that doesn't want to admit they're catering to the wrong crowd and that's why sales were down all 2015 long and just starting getting better with SOI.

Turns out the failure was (you)

Nothing compares to (You) also, user.

This HAS to mean they're dealing under the table with investors and 3rd party distributor's. Or they secretly are the investors.

And it's precisely the reason competitive players don't buy booster packs outside of drafting. And also the reason cards like Jace and Avacyn creep up to 50+ dollars. The game would be way more accessible for everyone if they didn't purposefully design bad cards. People could actually trade for what they need. Instead booster packs are like glorified lottery tickets.

the thing is, there shouldnt be any reason we cant have the best of both worlds

if every card was legit constructed strong, there would be issues, but theres no reason for the gap between the constructed playable and the other 90% of the cards you get in packs to be so wide

I remember Faceless Butchers and Laquatus' Champions galore during that time. But I also remember GU madness and all the green and white stuff in Judgment. It was a fun time, and I could still get by with my stupid red deck.

Everything after 7ed was and continues to be a mistake. Pic for unapologetic but self-aware.

...

>theres no reason for the gap between the constructed playable and the other 90% of the cards you get in packs to be so wide
Of course there is.
You need to open 110 packs aprox. to get a specific mythic.
You need 4x of those mythics.
And by "you" I mean every players who expects to compete, like at least half of the 2004 people at GP New York this past weekend.

Avacyn sold 110,000 packs by herself.