I Understand some people's frustration over this game.

[Elimo]

I have been playing card games since forever. I've played both digital card games like legend of runeterra, TESO legends, Kards, yu-gi-oh, magic, etc. While i am nothing close to a pro player or anything, i find my passion for these games in what i call "the alchemy". I love creating decks. Gimmicky ones, meta ones, weird ahh shenanigans, you name it, i did it.

I've been watching the numerous discussions over magic lately, and realised that the player base seem mostly disatisfied over standard, and/or ranked plays. While i find ranked plays much more healthier, I totally understand why some players are just overall pissed at the standard modes.

It's just hard to try anything there. You will usually encounter, in most of your games, the same annoying decks that everyone just hates playing against:

- the troll player who plays a token deck (rat/cat/rabbit) and spam the corresponding emotes (rat, cat, rabbit).
- the phyrexian deck who spams instant and sorceries to give you 10 poison counter and destroy everything you put on the board.
- Those player who plays nothing but instant based on destroying whatever you play.

Sure, all of those decks can be countered, but it leaves much less spaces for creativity. You want to try that cool deck you just made? might want to wait 5 or 6 games before you encounter a noteworthy opponent. You want to do your daylies? easy, but painfully unfunny.

I have been playing A LOT these past weeks to prepare for the new set, and these are the kind of player i mostly came across. It's frustrating, it's not fun, and it sure doesn't encourage creativity. I've now known for a while that if i want to win, i have to play my gimmick deck centered around those, but they are not fun, and it quickly turns into a boring game experience.

I still have hopes for ranked play since i can still see some kind of variety over there, and players are much more serious, but then it's also where you encounters those annoying strategies where players are using all their timeout in hope to see you quit.


So, with all of this said, i suppose i should try to find a way to conclude my train of thought.

While the game may be frustrating a lot of the time, i still have hopes for this one. Magic is a huge card game with tons of format. as the sets are released, there will be, and there is, a ton of things to try. People are being annoying in standard? take this opportunity as training in both deckbuilding and plays. there are ways to counter these decks, sure it's not fun to stumble against them, but it sure is very fun when you make them concede!!

Ok i'll be honest i don't know how to properly end this thread. Look, just don't fall into the dark side of saltyness and toxic deck. Stay healthy and creative.

Anyway, see ya!

[anaris]

ye honestly this is why i don't love standard - i think the rotation forcing deck updates and the big impact of new sets dropping and the draft archetypes being well-known and stuff serve to like, make people cautious about trying to do new things, and the presence of a few strong meta decks makes people work to counter those meta decks, often with other meta decks, and it proliferates into like "4/5ths of people run one of the top 6 archetypes". Like I think it's a consequence of the format more than anything else. Historic's got its big stars but they're much less common and they don't change so like, it's easier to approach the meta in a way even though it's higher power.

[Elimo]

true, i suppose we, as player, need to replace the will to win, with a will to try and create. I understand how stressful it can be to try new stuff in card games. Espacially in games that are well established like magic. Even i, sometimes, create new decks and be like "but what if i lose?" and then i have to remind myself that it's just a game XD. It's hard to lose. It's hard on the pride most of all.

But i kinda like the fact that magic's standard format is limited to a 2 years of set's release. When i first jumped into magic i thought this was bs and just making the game more expensive, but with time i came to appreciate it because it forces you to embrace changes.

That being said, i totally agree with the historic format. By making the card pool bigger, the meta tend to fade away because in magic, every card has it's time to shine. Not like in yu-gi-oh where old format suffers a lot from the game's power creep.

[nul]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Elimo:

true, i suppose we, as player, need to replace the will to win, with a will to try and create. I understand how stressful it can be to try new stuff in card games. Espacially in games that are well established like magic. Even i, sometimes, create new decks and be like "but what if i lose?" and then i have to remind myself that it's just a game XD. It's hard to lose. It's hard on the pride most of all.

Easier to do when you're playing with friends and playing casually for no stakes at local places and stuff. But since this is just online matchmaking, and the grind so large that you're encouraged to win as much as possible, it makes brewing more oppressive.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Elimo:

But i kinda like the fact that magic's standard format is limited to a 2 years of set's release. When i first jumped into magic i thought this was bs and just making the game more expensive, but with time i came to appreciate it because it forces you to embrace changes.

It was 2 years. Now it's 3 years. And Foundations is 5 years. So we get all the more powerful cards lingering around longer, causing people to change less. But they also pump out new sets more frequently now, so you have to constantly update those decks with new pieces. Because in order to make the sets playable in limited formats, everything has to have the same pieces. 1 drops that have to have an ability. Removal spells. Boardwipes. Tempo pieces, etc. And in order to sell the set to standard players, those new-but-same things also have to compete with cards from other standard legal sets for the slot in the deck... And then some decks end up running 3 different copies of the best thing for that style of play. It was a number of sets ago but someone made a video where he played 36 wraths in a deck.

[anaris]

the most important skill to cultivate in games like magic is having fun even while losing

[Elimo]

I find it hard to understand the reason why companies who makes card game like these are so hellbent on making competitive grind. Even without competitive oriented objective, people would probably play the game as intended. Yet, they persist on making daylies with objective like "win 15 games". Why not make more flexible, and different daylies. They already have daylies like play X lands, why not add quest like "resurrect X creature", "play X instant", etc. it would encourage players to be more creative, and create a more diverse experience overall for everyone.

The competitive play would stay, but it would be in ranked, where people actually plan on being competitive. Right now, i just find it weird that ranked is much more playable than standard, and it even shows more deck variety than in standard. Like why!! haha

[tovie]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από anaris:

the most important skill to cultivate in games like magic is having fun even while losing

easy to do if the game allowed you to play with friends, but with how you need daily wins and you can only play solo and no way to communicate with your opponent. any chance of fun is far away. this game is set up to just be frustrating, gues thats how you make easily manipulated whales spend money on free to play...

[kingjames488]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Elimo:

It's just hard to try anything there. You will usually encounter, in most of your games, the same annoying decks that everyone just hates playing against:

- the troll player who plays a token deck (rat/cat/rabbit) and spam the corresponding emotes (rat, cat, rabbit).
- the phyrexian deck who spams instant and sorceries to give you 10 poison counter and destroy everything you put on the board.
- Those player who plays nothing but instant based on destroying whatever you play.

you forgot...
- those players who don't play the game and just sit there waiting for you to develop a board then sunfall it and kill you with mites and toxic
- blue mages.
- discard decks that don't let you play the game
- probably more I'm forgetting

in general it's annoying when your opponent's goal is to not allow you to play the game...

[Zlehtnoba]

Oh you can play, you just can't do anything relevant or keep a creature on the board :)

(I play Esper Pixie in Standard and have a lot of fun).

[anaris]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από tovie:

easy to do if the game allowed you to play with friends,

it does

but with how you need daily wins

well you don't NEED daily wins, but like, i think i probably have a 50% winrate if i'm optimistic and it doesn't take me more than an hour or two to get the wins in. The goal of a daily win is like, "addicting", so I really recommend finding a way to enjoy the game without chasing these.

and you can only play solo and no way to communicate with your opponent.

so like the social element of in person play? this one i kinda get, it's a different experience on here with the limited communication, but i kiiinda think i prefer the limits to the amount of yelling other online games feature?

[anaris]

also y'all need to think about control decks more clearly.

When you're facing control, there's a lot going on in the player's heads that you don't see, and that's where the game is - you gotta play them, not their deck. Bait out counters, play multiple smaller plays per turn rather than dropping your biggest things, and put things down that they have to tap out to remove in their turn. Play in your second main phase so they're baited into spending mana on combat they need to counter your ♥♥♥♥, fake out having nothing to play, drop your own instants in response to them counterspelling stuff you don't care about, wait to combo off until they tap out for their own wincon, and build your deck so the whole thing doesn't collapse if they remove one kind of effect.

the problem with control isn't that people don't get to play, it's that most people *don't realise they can*. The number of wins I get from people who just carry on with their gameplan completely unchanged and just hope I have nothing to say about it is.... way too high. like, if you're just playing the biggest thing you have the mana for once per turn, yeah, you don't get to continue doing that. That's not a strategy, you see. You have to adjust to your opponent.

If you wanna just throw stuff down and hope you get to win before your opponent throws their own winning stuff down, you wanna play yugioh, that's their thing (and don't get me wrong, that's valid - I played yugioh for a few years). Ours is interaction.

[Elimo]

Magic's devs should really consider changing the daily wins for something else. Not only does it encourages a lot of the behavior previously stated, but it's not even worth anything. like, 25 gold for a win by the end of the challenge? really? When i do daylies i focus on the rewarding ones, and just let go of the daily wins. It's clearly just there to force grinding down people's throats.

[Zlehtnoba]

Actually, it's the opposite. The daily quests, which are not win-related, give as much or more gold than the win-related rewards, and these peter out after the first four wins. You actually don't get a thing after the 15th, so this system discourages grinding. As you noticed,, so your last statement is probably just an oversight.

[Elimo]

true, but that's a weird way to prevent it thought haha