Why did it take WotC so long to recognize they had purposely made U overpowered and make the necessary reparations?

Why did it take WotC so long to recognize they had purposely made U overpowered and make the necessary reparations?

WotC was very, very bad at designing Magic back when they started. Go through some of the old cards sometime if you're not familiar with them - they can be fucking hilarious.

>>reparations

Did they send out free packs to people that didn't play blue? Cause I missed that.

Have you seen some of WotC's other products?
Like, say, D&D?

>purposely made U overpowered
>purposely
[citation needed]

Well, they clearly knew they made Ancestral Recall dramatically more powerful than the other cards in the ABU "three of something for one mana" cycle, or they wouldn't have printed it at rare and the rest at common.

Fucking aggro babby.

And Black Lotus was considered fair for similar reasons. At the time it wasn't expected that people would collect the cards seriously.

After that notion was dispelled pretty much all of blue's power was accidental and due to the fact that it got a lot of the weird experimental effects that they didn't have any clue how powerful it would be. It's worth noting that blue is home to many of magic's most powerful cards, but also a much larger proportion of its very worst.

Let's be fair, it was their first set and one of the first card games of its type out there. They weren't necessarily aware of the balance point of such a card, and indeed, some games work out just fine with a lot of card draw capabilities.

Although you can take a look at a lot of other blue cards released (Mind of Matter) to see that Wizards clearly liked using blue for the "strange but potentially good" ideas. That has produced a lot of crap, but it also produced a lot of amazing cards which ended up dominating. It's just that tier lists or deck building simply ignores the underpowered bad blue cards and focused on the overpowered ones - and you can't just release underpowered and overpowered and suppose it all balances out.

It's much like how they treated spellcasting in D&D. Sure, the wizard can break the game, but they an also get Animate Rope as a spell. It's just that the designers apparently forgot that people could just ignore the Animate Rope spells and instead focus on the powerful spellcasting.

They still haven't?

>Sure, the wizard can break the game, but they an also get Animate Rope as a spell.
In early D&D, Magic-Users were actually really shit below high levels.
Spellcasting gave initiative penalties and any damage while casting wasted the spell slot.
Different classes also needed different amounts of XP to level up. Mages being the slowest.
>just ignore the Animate Rope spells and instead focus on the powerful spellcasting
Also a no-go. When making a character or leveling up you diced to determine what spells you learned.
You had a (slim) chance to learn spells on your own, but only if the referee let you get a hold of them.

I'm familiar with how AD&D worked. I never played OD&D or BECMI, though, but I think the basics functioned somewhat similarly.

Wizards could break the game at high levels. Mind you, it wasn't as bad as in D&D3e, but the wizard was still the one with Plane Shift and so on. There were certainly a lot of penalties to spellcasting that D&D3e basically ignored (creatures had independent saves and generally nothing you could do would affect them, so good luck on that 2 or less roll) and spells did a base set of damage, which might be irrelevant compared to the HP the monster might have.

And while mages were the slowest levelers, clerics leveled up faster than thieves for most of their career.

>When making a character or leveling up you diced to determine what spells you learned.
Funny, I always played where you could only get a spell upon finding a scroll or expensive research in creating one. (or finding a friendly fellow wizard) Part of the fun of the wizard was using what spells you did find to great effect, not in picking out your full career spell list at early levels. If I wanted to be able to pick whatever spells I wanted, I'd play a cleric.


Although the topic of the thread is how Wizard of the Coast treats their spellcasters; pre-WotC version of D&D, made by TSR, probably don't matter that much to that topic.

>but the wizard was still the one with Plane Shift and so on.
In 2e, poorly built Psionicists (or Wild Talents) could do that at level 1.
In 1e, some high-level Wild Talents could do that, IIRC??
In OD&D, mid-level MU Wild Talents could do that. Mid-level Priest Wild Talents got something similar.

>Funny, I always played where
Whatever floats your boat.
>you could only get a spell upon
By the book, you learn 2 random spells at level up. "From you downtime research", or something.
>finding a scroll
And passing a Learn Language percentile check, with no retries ever.
>or expensive research in creating one.
Couple different rules for that, IIRC.
The only one I remember offhand also needed a Learn Language check.
You got to retry that check, but the whole thing was super expensive.

>If I wanted to be able to pick whatever spells I wanted, I'd play a cleric.
They're supposed to makes requests, then have the referee pick for them.
Unrequested but relevant spells for upcoming problems, bad (or less) spells to unfaithful priests. That sort of thing.

>pre-WotC version of D&D, made by TSR, probably don't matter that much to that topic.
Wasn't thinking, my bad.

>blue's power was accidental and due to the fact that it got a lot of the weird experimental effects that they didn't have any clue how powerful it would be

Turbo stasis comes to mind, as does force of will, hell id even say capsize.

wizards had no idea how magic actually worked when they started making it

>1U
>get extra turn

they only got the hand of it after...
did they ever get the hang of how to make a game?

>Give access to stack interaction to only one color
>Gee why is this color so controversial?

I think it depends on the edition, because AD&D 2e doesn't actually have a set rule for how a magic user gets more spells. There's a lot of options, including random, pick an amount, and "get what I give you" but the DM has to actually pick one of those options.

Sometimes red can copy spells, or swap targets around.

Too bad in creature the tappening that doesn't matter at all.

How would you give the other colors stack interaction? Which colors should be better at it?

>White
Some kind of order related thing, I guess? Like, being able to swap card places or something? Or placing a tax on the whole stack? Effects that change how the stack operates? Maybe a purification effect? Like "target spell now does (positive thing)".

>Black
Black would probably have a mix of effects, buying into other colors at steep costs, but at a rare rate. Maybe some target destruction stuff? Like "Destroy the target of target spell". Or a corruption effect, like "target spell now does (negative thing)".

>Red
Would remain one of the most stack active colors, probably keeping the target changing and copying.

>Green
Creatures that can do vaguely anti interaction stuff to things on the stack, probably, like, giving a spell the Kira, Great Glass Spinner effect, or something? Probably the least stack focused color.

Stack interaction frequency would look something like
>Blue
>Red
>White
>Black
>Green

A better question is why did they over correct so hard and make blue largely worthless in newer formats.

Control is unpleasant to lose to.

To be fair, the increased creature focus is because all five colors have ways to interact with creature-focused strategies.

Blue can tap down or bounce them out.

Red burns them to death or steals them.

Black kills them outright in a variety of ways or steals them, or kills and then reanimates them.

White traps, binds, or exiles them.

Green fights them.

If they were willing to make the stack no longer blue's secret clubhouse that only red can even think about maybe peeking inside, maybe spells could be more important again, but a game where spells are more important than creatures and only one color really interacts with spells at all, what's the fucking point of not playing blue?

They havent, they just underpowered everything but african fauna and planeswalkers.
Making "reparations" would mean making cards as powerful as Jace the Mind-Sculptor, Brainstorm, Force of Will and True-Name Nemesis for eternal formats. Only black comes anywhere close with Liliana of the Veil and Hymn to Tourach.

>W
Tax countering. Pay or fuck off.
>U
Hard counters. No, just no.
>R
Redirection. No u.
>G
Hexproof. Can't touch this.

Black gets to do any for a price.