Is Standard dying as a format?

That's not why reprints don't happen. We have multiple fucking blocks that aren't standard at any given time and they don't print them there either. Are you retarded or just stupid?

They literally stated they don't want decks (((emerging))) that were not strictly intended.

>R+D was too dumb to exploit the granted playspace so we're not going to print any engines at common/uncommon and fuckit /rare"

Yes, because mtg is a terrible game full of increasingly autistic players.

>3. Take action against SCG for sabotaging the playerbase with predatory business practices
What?

Nah, standard will have a revival after the latest rotation change. At least at the FNM level any way.

A Kaladesh deck you make will be meaningful until Q42018. As long as you update any edlritch cards and stuff that's rotating out, you are not gonna spend $400, unless you are thinking over the coarse of several years.

*course

>Is Standard dying as a format?
>If so, why?

Because the entire game, even the cheapest format officially supported on paper that's designed for new players, has become ludicrously, hilariously, horrifyingly expensive.

People tell me GW has gone into maximum overjew but GW look like fucking Oxfam next to WoTC. How the fuck do you even sell someone on Magic these days, that kind of money will buy you so many other, objectively equally or even more enjoyable things.

>The reselling/trading community drastically inflates the price of many cards that there's an ample supply of
This as well, players want to be smart investors because god forbid they face up to how much they're spending on fucking playing cards. They trade and trust arbitrary cad merchants to set a baseline price which everyone uses. The 'astute investors' basically created a cartel to rip them off because they've been spending money on cards they don't want long term, don't need and deep down know they can't afford.

>objectively equally or even more enjoyable things.
Such as?

Magic is fun and the cards will always be there. Do I wish the card I buy at $10/ea to have a solid standard deck won't sink to fifty cents soon as it rotates? Yeah, but that's the price to pay to win a few games.

To me, Magic is a pretty cheap hobby, all things considered. I mean, really - take a step back and look at what, say, $1,000 will get you in Magic and then at Golf, or boating, or any myriad hobbies people have. Fuck, look at how much people blow on liquor every weekend on average.

On the extreme end of the scale, I used to race motorcycles. Now that's expensive. So maybe my view is just a little biased, take it as you will.

If the MTG market had a fraction of the enforceable regulations that any sanctioned market has, SCG would have been shut down years ago and Ben Bleweiss would be serving a 10-year prison sentence.

I really wanted to get into MTG, but the prices are just insane for the paper version. BUT, I thought I'd check out the online client to see if things were a bit better.

>cost $10 to even get the client
>from there, you still have to buy cards (what the fuck is the $10 entry fee for?)
>not even a code card with a physical pack like Pokemon does
>all that aside, the viable standard decks still cost over $250
>looks like it was coded in 2004 and just had basic set updates since then

I guess the best format to start in is Pauper?

I really wanted an alternative to Pokemon while I wait for the new set, but this just looks like a cluster fuck right now.

Because it's too fucking expensive, given how bullshit some Mythic Rare cards can get.
Even worse, there are plenty which are garbage, meaning that people have to crack that many packs again, just to get another fucking Liliana.

You still haven't told me what exactly they're doing.

>objectively equally or even more enjoyable things.
The best comparison for Magic is other CCGs, LCGs, tabletop wargaming and maybe P&P, they tend to attract the same people. I'd also throw in computer games as well.

A gaming habit is 2-3 Standard rotations to start and then makes each rotation look insane after that.

Wargaming, even the most expensive ones, are two Standard decks an army and that army is good for as long as you want it with maybe minor exceptions if you're baselining off a GW game. Call it 2 or 3 rotations too.

P&P is cheap as hell but P&P is cheap as hell compared to nearly any hobby.

LCGs are way cheaper, even getting into Netrunner and buying every single expansion and 3 core sets is around a Standard rotation. Most are cheaper than this.

>$1,000 will get you in Magic and then at Golf, or boating, or any myriad hobbies people have.
One is some pieces of card board, the other is clubs and a fucking boat.

WotC used to really hate the digital front, saw it as competition to their paper product and so on and didn't want to compete with itself.
You used to be able to trade in digital cards for the 'real' thing, but only one complete set at a time, which they used as a reason for why they had to charge MSRP for everything.
Dunno if they still do this.
But yeah, it's an ancient, buggy client. Hopefully their new leadership will help implement codes-in-packs, a new program/platform - which includes pulling the plug on Duels - and some kind of better exchange program if they really want to do MSRP for a digital product.

Clubs drop in value to nothing soon as you buy the fuckers. And a boat is a fucking boat - a god damn money sink you're paying for the privilege to have for whatever reason. The docking fees alone on a typical 20' boat would buy you two or three standard decks.

Nigger 99% of things drop in value when you get them.

The point is, you're getting something more than a piece of fucking paper. A Black Lotus is made of material that cost under a penny to make.

Magic card prices are artificial inflation.

>artificial inflation
That's called rarity, user
Or rather, rarity coupled with a demand for said rare object, since rarity by itself doesn't do dickshit.
Anyways, the problem with standard, at least from watching the ebb and flow of people in modern/standard events at my lgs, is way too many people think of modern as some kind of 'investment' you'll always get your money back on in case you want to bail whereas standard is just pissing your money away.
I can see where they're coming from, but most of them fail to realize they're setting themselves up in a trap. Sure you can make one deck that will, in theory, last you many years for $700-900, are you going to just want to play that deck?
People making the switch to standard from modern usually did so because they were tired of playing the same handful of decks for months on end, from what I heard.
So it works both ways.
Probably the best thing Wizards could do is drop the MSRP on packs from $4 or whatever the fuck they're at now to $2.79 or something. A finance board won't ever let it happen though, even if it did mean a possible influx of droves.

It's artificial BECAUSE of the rarity. Wizards could get rid of the rarity scales and just have fully random cards in every pack. You wouldn't see a card over $4.

The game would be disgustingly cheap to play, but that's not going to make their (or any other companies) wallets happy.

>dropping the rarity
well, that's just bullshit.
there would be no reason to open a pack then, and limited formats couldn't exist
they just need to print good card at rare, and leave the mythic slot to overcosted cards or cards with weird effect, like they used to do back in Alara.

Because the standard meta is fucking shit at the moment.
There could be a lot of fun and interesting decks, but it's not fun to play with them when you just get wrecked by the same three shitty decks.

All they need to to is look at the Pokemon model.

The "mythic" slot for Pokemon is typically not playable, but sought after for the cool art and collectibility (and they hold their value over time because of that).

And if there is a playable "mythic" card, it's typically just a fancier version of a standard playable rare. (Ultra Ball costs literally under $1, but the SR version can be upwards of $150).

The only card to break that rule is Shaymin EX. It's $50 for regular and about $80 SR.

>but only one complete set at a time
And you only got x1 of each, didn't you?
No "I have full alliances and x4 fows, do I get full x1 of each on alliances AND 4 fows?"

you can live inside you fucking boat tho.

And a shitty semi-hardtop one to fuck around is like 200 to 1000, motor included.

>That's called artificial rarity
ftfy retard

>not going to make their
But is this true?

I would like to see some hard facts for once, people would buy packs directly from wizards if they had useful stuff in them instead of just drafting, the second market doesn't make any profit to wizard itself outside of indeed just buying booster boxes to crack or sell later.

You "secondary market" idiots have no understanding of anything.

>Why does a vodka distributor sell to a bar? It's not like they make money on the secondary market.
>Why would Nike sell collectible shoes to small retailers? It's not like they make money on the secondary market.
>Why would nestle sell their chocolate to a wholesale retailer? It's not like they make money on the secondary market.

None of your analogies are part of a secondary market for their own genres you incredible moron.

Deciding rarity not by power, but by the needs and wants of limited, would be best.
Selling packs directly, or just printing more, would work too.

Right, you got one set at a time, one card per set.
What's funny is it meant you also had to get all the lands specific to that set before you could cash it in.
It was the dumbest shit. And yet I sank like $500 into it back when I was 16-17.

user, I want you to really think over the consequences and design challenges of making a set where every card is the same rarity without making any of them more desirable than another. If the manufacturer doesn't invent a rarity scale, the playerbase will.

You folks also forget Wizards is a business, I think. There's a lot of evidence and research that goes into showing rares and mythics encourage gambling behavior because they reward the same centers. They'd sell a lot less packs if they dropped their rarity scheme.

And hey, it could be worse - just look at the Gacha method Korea/Japan employed in a shit load of card/mobile games that got so fucking out of hand laws had to be made.

Overall, Wizards is a business, but they aren't the evil overloads here to piss in your cheerios and shit in your mouth like they're sometimes portrayed as.

Selling directly would require them setup another complete chain of logistics and support they probably just don't want to deal with.
They already print a fuck-ton as-is.
I think the real problem is Hasbro keeping a tight leash on their WotC cash cow. They won't let them risk anything that could hurt short-term revenues since WotC is about the only brand that's profitable for them.
The main reason I think this is ties to Magic-fucking-Online accounting for a fucking third of their revenue. A god damn third in that sorry state it's in.
It's not all that much cheaper overall to get into, yet it attracts a lot of players - ease of finding matches is probably the chief reason, sure, but people just don't want to pay $100 for a box or $3.79 a pack at their LGS. Drop pack costs, it'll hamper short-term revenues, but it'll likely be better overall.

It's too expensive for casuals and too dumbed-down for fanatics.

Well some reprints did not happen because of standard, Liliana of the veil for example.no idea why she wasn't reprinted in eternal masters either tho.

No need to be rude.

>at the moment

It's been like this for almost a year.

literally just take the pokemon pack model + online client and apply it to magic. That's all that needs to be done.

I think Magic as a whole is an outdated and heavily flawed game and would like nothing more than to see its players migrate to better things. That said, Magic will definitely live longer than I will and standard is not in any way dying as a format. As long as it's the poster child for CCGs people who don't know any better will continue to feed the machine, it doesn't matter how dissatisfied previous customers have become.

Let's assume that instead of cards, SCG was dealing in stocks and therefore bound by the SEC and its rules. Based on solely what we know, the company has committed the following crimes:

>Fraud
>Insider Trading
>Conspiracy to Manipulate Tradeable Securities
>Manipulation of Tradeable Securities
>Conspiracy to commit Racketeering
>Racketeering
>Grand Larceny
>Usury

And that's just what we know about from very shallow investigative reporting. This would be a RICO case that involves the SEC, FBI, and the DEA as well if Chapin's name ever comes up. And probably a few more bits of alhpabet soup on top of it.

>no idea why she wasn't reprinted in eternal masters either tho.
Because wizards generates more hype and revenue from "this COULD be the set where we reprint LotV!" than they could ever get from actually doing it.

Damnation is the same way.

Yes, standard is dead. Frontier is the new master race format, all the mtg youtubers are making videos about it so we're legit!

Heres my ideas for making standard a bit better.

>Stop making the pushed/meta cards all rares and mythics, make commons and uncommons not dogshit 90% of the time

>Give power back to non-creature spells, people are starting to get sick of Creatures:the Midranging

>Fix your garbage promos. Oh geeee I wonder why FMN attendance was super high when Path and Serum Visions were promos?

Rate

I'm playing STOMR in STANDARD for UNDER SEVENTLY BCKS

THIS IS THE WILEDES RIDE IM BEEN ON FORA LING TMIE

>>Give power back to non-creature spells, people are starting to get sick of Creatures:the Midranging
Well, the move towards a creature focused format is due largely to ensuring there's interactivity, though they've fucked up with red - black is far and away the best removal color in standard at the moment.

I agree with the promos, they've been pretty shit.

As well as more good commons and uncommons. They don't need to do anything fancy, in keeping with their design philosophy of making things simple at the common rarities, but just make them not shit.
Like, there's no fucking reason at all for the new counterspell to be a god damn rare other than greed. Should've been uncommon.

>Like, there's no fucking reason at all for the new counterspell to be a god damn rare other than greed
Fucking agreed.

What was their shitty excuse for making commons shit and rares amazing? "The more complicated card the higher the rarity"?

What a load of shit. I've seen more complicated cards on a fucking Kaladesh common.

If you mean Disallow, it's rare for complexity issues, as were Stifle, Trickbind, and Voidslime before it. The precedent for that at rare is fine.

What really bogged down the game to Creatures: The Midranging can be tied directly to Sam Stoddard and his philosophy on design: that removal spells should never be cheaper than the threats they can answer, because that's "an undue constraint on design space".

We were not wrong for letting him try it. We were wrong for seeing what it got us, and not shutting it down there and then. And now we've got people who see the massive board clogs from a CoCo mirror and have deluded themselves into thinking "this was how magic was always supposed to be played"

in english?

Yet people wonder why people are flocking to Pokemon.

People are ditching the cool cards and lore of MTG because Wizards is THAT fucking shit at running their business.

Meanwhile Pokemon continues to be Fanservice: The Game albeit a simpler game in general.

>we
>and not shutting it down there and then
i can just imagine user knocking on sam stoddard's door crying out "STOP THIS NOW" while the bald fuck shrugs

how much power do you think you have

yes

the only non dying format currently is EDH but thats only because most people are fleeing modern and standard. simply put the problem is that standard is too expensive to keep up with and is also expensive to get into. not to mention most long time players are still pissed about things like CoCo, siege rhino, and other such faggotry like the khans block plus standard is honestly just boring as fuck right now

Just get rid of mythic rarity, boom fixed 80% of the problem.

>3. Take action against SCG for sabotaging the playerbase with predatory business practices
this, things like kike city games are actively killing magic in general not just standard

You know what I meant. There needed to be a significant backlash from the players once we realized how boring Stoddardian Design made the game, and people just sat and kept eating shit because they assumed "WotC will figure it out on their own".

Spoiler alert, wizards doesn't know to do shit unless you make a stink about it. It's a big reason why the alt-left was able to get their hooks into the company as deeply as it did.

No... many just go play commander shit.

X M A G E

yes its dying but mostly because of cost and how dumb fuckingly OP mythic rares are

honestly EDH is the best format by far anyway and a budget EDH deck is easily competitive in the format

someone does not know what secondary market means

Just wait for Modern Masters 2017. Wizards explicitly stated that it was going to focus on Innistrad and Ravnica.

Wizards can't afford to just tank prices on the secondary market through reprints and risk having to make a new Reserved List because neck beard collectors will whine about "muh investments" again.

user you still haven't told me what they're doing
Give me some fucking links or something to articles.
What's sad is it's completely fucked red. When's the last time a deck with red as its main color has done shit in standard?

>able to get their hooks into the company
those are experts at raising the stink after all...

It really is disgusting to think about. It's why I have never bought a single thing from them. It doesn't hurt them at all and I still get screwed by their manipulations effect on other sellers but I won't give them my money.

not him but kike city games hoards cares and engages in buy outs to artificially inflate the market and control the flow of cards. if your looking at a card that costs a bunch of money 90% of the time its because kike city games )or another entity like it, there are a few but they are the most well known) are involved in making it that way

Just a clarification. Sam Stoddard is in development, not design. A lot of the complaints people have about design is actually about development.

>>Fix your garbage promos. Oh geeee I wonder why FMN attendance was super high when Path and Serum Visions were promos?
oh my god fuck i still cant believe WotC doesnt do this

So what, would you say they were the reason Metallurgic Summonings jumped to $15 overnight for no god damn reason?

tanking the price on the secondary market would lose a fraction of the players that those formats would gain. if i had a dollar for every time ive seen someone wanting to get into modern or legacy that couldnt because of the price i would have enough money to build multiple top tier legacy decks

>They literally stated they don't want decks (((emerging))) that were not strictly intended.
Sauce?

wut?

Most modern players like the barrier to entry to try and keep it as a cool kids club.
Look at the price history

So much this. For every autist who gets pissed off and quit because there cardboard is now even more worthless you'd gain 5 or more people who can now afford your eternal formats.

And what most those autist don't seem to realize is just because your 75 pieces of cardboard are worth 1000$ you won't ever get that out of it. If you get 600$ out of it you are lucky. This is from someone who has actively tried to sell decks/cards, it's fucking hard and no one wants to pay you what shit is "worth".

This is all really interesting and I want to read more about it. Share your links.

>This is from someone who has actively tried to sell decks/cards, it's fucking hard and no one wants to pay you what shit is "worth".

I've tried to say this so often to modern players. Modern cards are typically very low trade volume and most prices are set online where you have a larger audience willing to pay more money. At your LGS, people are going to be reluctant to drop $100 on a Liliana or anything above $20, really. And let's not forget the lands.

>Most modern players like the barrier to entry to try and keep it as a cool kids club.
which is absolutely retarded and the barrier of entry is actively killing the format

If you do not see how that is a detriment and that it will destroy your format you are an idiot.

MTG has become more about economics than playing the fucking game.

No other card game has this problem, hence they're all doing well. Wizards has to pop this autistic bubble in order for the game to not fall off.

standard is the most affordable format but not by much. they're now, looking at keeping decks powerful without rares and walkers. for example cathartic reunion is how R&D is trying to go. make it powerful but keep it off the rare price. btw I'll trash anyone with their "meta netdeck" with homebrew shit and uncommons. the game is more complex than just having the most expensive and rare cards.

the real problem is the community and WOTC is still trying to find the right people to balance cards. they're only starting to get it.

>standard is the most affordable format
nice b8

I've had to learn this the hard way and it sucks. Even selling stuff online you get screwed, between listing fees, shipping costs, insurance and people undercutting you just get fucked.

>btw I'll trash anyone with their "meta netdeck" with homebrew shit and uncommons
Fucking kek. B/G delirium would like to have a word with you.

>the game is more complex than just having the most expensive and rare cards
Then why are the only decks winning the most expensive and rare cards? You can spout "buts" and "what ifs" all day, but when you look at the cold hard results, these decks are dominating.

>they're only starting to get it
They just put one of the best counterspells ever in the rare slot. The only thing they're "getting" is more money.

>standard is the most affordable format
If you're willing to play and lose every round with your janky homebrew shit.

>standard is the most affordable format but not by much
Not even by far.
Pauper is, for short and long stays and for shitbrewers and not (as most of the meta iso ne deck, you just build shit to wrekt that deck)

Standard is the "pro" format, nobody actually likes it because it's fun, we play it because it's the Pro Tour format and the only thing supported by many LGS.

Heartstone has already syphoned most of the "pros" away, because it's cheaper, more fun and pays much better than GPs and the Pro Tour.

So now Standard is trying to survive on the people who like it the least. Casuals would rather play any other format because even in Legacy a shitbrew is more likely to compete with Miracles or Storm, than any rogue deck is to compete with Aetherworks, Delirium or WU Spirits in Standard.

Now the new CEO has spoken about how he doesn't want the current "pros" representing Magic, wants to get rid of the Pro Tour and wants Magic to be an eSport which they hope to achieve with the upcoming "Magic Digital Next". So, why should anyone care about Standard anymore?

There's 8 LGS in my city, during RTR-THS Standard FNMs were 30+ people at each and PPTQs were on the hundreds. Currently most don't even fire Standard FNMs anymore and Showdown has been 8-12 people with half the attendance being dudes that put together their draft remains and hope for losers raffle packs. At the store I go to, we've entirely dropped any pretense at playing Standard and play Duel Commander instead because with 20 life that format is actually fun.

I sold my vintage deck (Oath) for a boat and a commercial fishing license. A couple tunas and a bunch of crab later, I already have Dredge built and am getting revised power as a christmass gift to myself.

A boat is only a money sink if you're literally retarded. This is not like hunting where selling your excess deer is actually more expensive than just giving it to the dogs.

>A boat is only a money sink if you're a retard weekend leisure cuck

Post boat.

This, Stoddard is the faggot that makes sure when MaRo is not stupid and actually makes a good design, it will be overcosted and common, or undercosted and Mythic.

>standard inexpensive

Let's look at the 3 top decks:
BG Delirium:
4 Flayer=$80
4 Liliana=$160
1 Emrakul=$20
That's already $260

UW Flash:
4 Avacyn=$80
4 Gideon=$120
That's already $200

Naya Marvel:
4 Emrakul=$80
3 Nahiri=$60
2 Chandra=$40
That's already $180

Even Marvel the cheapest (and probably the weakest) of the top 3 decks costs well over $200. BG Delirium, the most expensive (and probably the strongest) of the top 3 decks costs almost $500.

whats the best card game now that magic is dead?

It's a 1950 Super Hawk, perfect little thing for fishing tuna and getting girls shitface drunk offshore, got it for $22k, my deck sold for $32k because my power and Sol Ring were Beta.

Someone wants to play a format with nonrotating cards in a casual format? What shit!

Since Alara you fucking pleb.

Jund and Mythic Bant were fucking stupid.

STORM
IN STANDARD
ITS CHEAP
MR BONES

Stop making mythic rares..