Innovation vs. Balance: A MaRo Poll
If you follow the cesspool that is Magic Twitter, you may have noticed that Mark Rosewater is under fire with a recent poll he tweeted out as people are unhappy with the extreme levels of power creep within the game, especially in eternal formats like modern and legacy. The poll asked which of the following do you believe Wizards R&D should prioritize when designing a new set, innovation or balance. I personally voted for balance as did 58.5% of the total 16,000+ voters. He came out in a response to a tweet within the thread stating that R&D doesn't test cards in older formats because of the sheer size of the card pool. Okay fine, then stop designing sets for a specific format with the exception of standard. But also, your company provides prize support for more formats than just standard, don't you think those should be taken into consideration when designing and testing new cards? I get it, new cards will always have the potential to create new decks, but at least test them within the current meta. See if and how they fit in to the decks that are currently played and placing well in tournaments. We literally saw a short time where people were trying to jam Oko, Thief of Crowns into literally any deck they could get their hands on. It was in burn for Christ's sake!!!!! That's a red deck, not Temur. It's now banned in standard(the format it was designed and tested for), pioneer, modern, and brawl(a pseudo-commander variant with standard legal cards).
I get the innovation aspect of R&D. You want to design something that will push the boundaries of the game. But I'm also a purist at heart, especially when it comes to a game of Magic. As I've stated before, I came up in a time without planeswalker cards, interrupt was a card type, and we had cards in standard that went straight to the reserved list. Granted, I didn't play competitively back then, I only played at the kitchen table with friends, but the game was fun. I quit playing shortly after the release of 8ed because I just didn't find it fun anymore. This was probably for a variety of reasons though. I played with the same couple of people, I didn't have a huge card selection to brew decks with, and the cards I did have felt underwhelming because I didn't have the other pieces that made them good. Looking back however, I find that I miss those days where there wasn't really a meta like there is today. There wasn't people building the same exact deck. I didn't walk into my LGS and hear about specific cards being so good that they're banned in everything except for things like the power 9 but those cards had been out of print for almost 10 years when I started playing. In doing some research, over the two years I played the first time, 1999-2000, there was a grand total of 8 cards banned in standard. There was a significant number of cards banned in legacy during that time that were from standard sets but legacy was still a fairly new format, as it had only become legacy as we know it 2 years prior, in 1997. Currently, there are four cards banned in standard. In modern, there are two cards from standard legal sets banned, legacy has one, brawl has four, and pioneer has five. In vintage, which MaRo assumes we're talking about, there's three cards that ended up on the restricted list that are from sets currently in standard. What we also have to consider is the fact that we also had Modern Horizons that expanded the card pool for modern, legacy, and vintage of which there are two banned cards across all formats. In 2019 alone we had a grand total of 15 cards make the B&R list that were printed within that same year. One of those bans, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis took two cards with it to the ban list that were previously legal in modern. In January 2020 another card previously legal in modern was put on the ban list because of its interaction with a card printed into standard in 2019, The card banned was Mycosynth Lattice. The card in question, Karn the Great Creator. It seems to me, and to most competitive players, even at an FNM level of play, that 2019 was a bad year for the game. They came out with some cool new cards with some never before seen artwork, old characters came back and got their own cards for the first time, etc. The problem though, was the sheer number of cards that became issues in these eternal formats because there was no testing done. Had they even done a slight amount of testing in eternal formats they could've seen the issues ahead of time and potentially tweaked the card to a level that was balanced and fun.
From a financial aspect I can see why no testing is done for eternal formats. There's no money to be made there. The cards typically bought and sold for those formats are older, out of print cards. What they(WotC) needs to realize and understand though is that despite there being no money to be made off of them they still offer prize support and sanction tournaments featuring these formats. Had it not been for the coronavirus outbreak we would've had I believe three or four MagicFest events featuring eternal formats. The SCG tour would've had multiple events as well. The same can be said about the NRG series. From Jan 1st through May 31st there were a grand total of 32 eternal format events scheduled across all three event schedules. These events included a combination of pioneer, modern, and legacy. To blatantly ignore the players that traditionally participate in these events is a slap in the face to them. If you're handing out prize support for these events then you need to take into consideration their meta, the play style of the format, and how you want the meta to evolve moving forward. Quit relying on the B&R list to fix issues, it should only be used if some new strategy comes up and makes the format stale and miserable. KCI is a good example of this. Some new cards came up which made the card Krark Clan Ironworks extremely good in competitive play. They watched for a couple months to see if the meta would correct itself or if the deck was actually really good and going to stick around for a while. It turned out that the deck was in fact extremely good and posted high win rates and made the evolution of the game difficult moving forward so they decided to ban the card. I understand that there are things that are going to slip through the cracks. There is with anything that goes through an R&D process. The game of Magic is constantly evolving and should be designed as such to correct previous errors. In the event something does get banned there should be a group of people that continuously test the banned cards within the current meta in the format that they're banned in to see if it's okay to potentially unban them. Testing is something that should be constantly done to see if the previous error has been corrected. In the design process of anything you should never stop testing your product to find bugs or find fixes for bugs previously found. The second you stop testing a product is the second that someone will find an issue that you missed. I'll use PleasantKenobi's dream of the Stoneforge Mystic unban in modern as an example. It was banned in standard when it was there and modern wasn't a thing yet. When modern became a thing it was banned there. For years Vince(PK) had been rallying the troops to get the card unbanned in the format. Some people at WotC finally sat down and did some testing with it and found that it would be reasonable to make legal. It was a good choice to do that. The card is good but not so good that it broke the game. This needs to be constantly done with all cards on the ban list. It gets tiresome trying to keep up with the cards that are printed versus the cards you can actually play with. There shouldn't be any shame in unbanning a card just to find out that it's too good and have to ban it again later on. Just look at Golgari Grave Troll as an example of that. These are the correct mistakes to make. Not printing whatever cards you feel are good in a draft environment and possible standard just to have them warp a whole separate format because you didn't feel like doing any testing with it. If you're going to keep giving us cards that are so strong they get banned in multiple formats just do away with the reserve list and give us the power 9 in standard already. That's an extreme scenario but when you have cards that end up on the restricted list in vintage that are also in standard that's saying something about the power level of these cards. There's no reason a 3 mana planeswalker should be on any list with cards like Timetwister, Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, etc. but the sad reality right now is there is one. There's also a two mana planeswalker that's on the legacy ban list with cards like Library of Alexandria, Vampiric Tutor, and Tinker among others.
I know I've digressed and went a few different directions as to why people are upset with MaRo's statements throughout the article. I felt it was needed to kind of put the whole subject of innovation vs. balance into perspective though. Yes, innovation is good. We want new things, cards, mechanics, etc. But we also want to have a fun and balanced experience as we play the game. We don't want things like Oko continuing to be a nuisance moving forward. We also want to be able to feel comfortable in expanding our horizons as players and moving outside of standard and drafting. People enjoy playing pioneer, modern, and legacy. Don't take that enjoyment away from them. Do some R&D within those formats as well. The people that work at WotC play the game. I'm sure that among the group the knowledge of the card pool across all formats is amazing. Try using that to your advantage. Obviously design your cards to meet the theme and expectations you have of the set but then in testing let the people on those teams run wild. Tell them to break the card. Tell them to goldfish a turn 4-5 win at an 85% or higher rate. If they can then put that deck they designed up against current meta decks and see how well it does. If it maintains that then consider not printing it. There's roughly 250 cards printed in a standard set but there's probably three times that amount designed. If one card doesn't work out there's always fall-back options. There has to be some sort of happy medium between both innovation and balance when designing cards for a game this complex. There also has to be a way to test new cards in various formats at a minimum within the current meta of that format. As players, find cards you potentially like for the format you're assigned and try to see how well it works within various decks in the format. If it seems to be fine then print it. If there's a lot of issues with it, scrap the design and move on. Understand that eternal formats don't care about set themes, but rather synergy. It's time WotC R&D start caring about the eternal formats just as much as they do about standard. It's also time they quit relying on the B&R list to "fix" their mistakes permanently. It should be a temporary thing with the potential to unban it in the future. Find ways for players to be able to effectively interact with cards on the ban list instead of just leaving them there and forgetting about them. Let's get a card that says something to the affect of players cannot spend life in lieu of mana for a cost and unban Mental Misstep. Or let's design a mechanic that can act as a counter to dredge. Let's make that one card that removes all copies of a spell from the stack to play against storm. We have the storm scale. Instead of just not printing things that use those mechanics again let's find ways to make them more fair to play against. These things can be achieved, they just have to be thought about as cards, mechanics, and sets are designed. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. Have fun and happy brewing.
I get the innovation aspect of R&D. You want to design something that will push the boundaries of the game. But I'm also a purist at heart, especially when it comes to a game of Magic. As I've stated before, I came up in a time without planeswalker cards, interrupt was a card type, and we had cards in standard that went straight to the reserved list. Granted, I didn't play competitively back then, I only played at the kitchen table with friends, but the game was fun. I quit playing shortly after the release of 8ed because I just didn't find it fun anymore. This was probably for a variety of reasons though. I played with the same couple of people, I didn't have a huge card selection to brew decks with, and the cards I did have felt underwhelming because I didn't have the other pieces that made them good. Looking back however, I find that I miss those days where there wasn't really a meta like there is today. There wasn't people building the same exact deck. I didn't walk into my LGS and hear about specific cards being so good that they're banned in everything except for things like the power 9 but those cards had been out of print for almost 10 years when I started playing. In doing some research, over the two years I played the first time, 1999-2000, there was a grand total of 8 cards banned in standard. There was a significant number of cards banned in legacy during that time that were from standard sets but legacy was still a fairly new format, as it had only become legacy as we know it 2 years prior, in 1997. Currently, there are four cards banned in standard. In modern, there are two cards from standard legal sets banned, legacy has one, brawl has four, and pioneer has five. In vintage, which MaRo assumes we're talking about, there's three cards that ended up on the restricted list that are from sets currently in standard. What we also have to consider is the fact that we also had Modern Horizons that expanded the card pool for modern, legacy, and vintage of which there are two banned cards across all formats. In 2019 alone we had a grand total of 15 cards make the B&R list that were printed within that same year. One of those bans, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis took two cards with it to the ban list that were previously legal in modern. In January 2020 another card previously legal in modern was put on the ban list because of its interaction with a card printed into standard in 2019, The card banned was Mycosynth Lattice. The card in question, Karn the Great Creator. It seems to me, and to most competitive players, even at an FNM level of play, that 2019 was a bad year for the game. They came out with some cool new cards with some never before seen artwork, old characters came back and got their own cards for the first time, etc. The problem though, was the sheer number of cards that became issues in these eternal formats because there was no testing done. Had they even done a slight amount of testing in eternal formats they could've seen the issues ahead of time and potentially tweaked the card to a level that was balanced and fun.
From a financial aspect I can see why no testing is done for eternal formats. There's no money to be made there. The cards typically bought and sold for those formats are older, out of print cards. What they(WotC) needs to realize and understand though is that despite there being no money to be made off of them they still offer prize support and sanction tournaments featuring these formats. Had it not been for the coronavirus outbreak we would've had I believe three or four MagicFest events featuring eternal formats. The SCG tour would've had multiple events as well. The same can be said about the NRG series. From Jan 1st through May 31st there were a grand total of 32 eternal format events scheduled across all three event schedules. These events included a combination of pioneer, modern, and legacy. To blatantly ignore the players that traditionally participate in these events is a slap in the face to them. If you're handing out prize support for these events then you need to take into consideration their meta, the play style of the format, and how you want the meta to evolve moving forward. Quit relying on the B&R list to fix issues, it should only be used if some new strategy comes up and makes the format stale and miserable. KCI is a good example of this. Some new cards came up which made the card Krark Clan Ironworks extremely good in competitive play. They watched for a couple months to see if the meta would correct itself or if the deck was actually really good and going to stick around for a while. It turned out that the deck was in fact extremely good and posted high win rates and made the evolution of the game difficult moving forward so they decided to ban the card. I understand that there are things that are going to slip through the cracks. There is with anything that goes through an R&D process. The game of Magic is constantly evolving and should be designed as such to correct previous errors. In the event something does get banned there should be a group of people that continuously test the banned cards within the current meta in the format that they're banned in to see if it's okay to potentially unban them. Testing is something that should be constantly done to see if the previous error has been corrected. In the design process of anything you should never stop testing your product to find bugs or find fixes for bugs previously found. The second you stop testing a product is the second that someone will find an issue that you missed. I'll use PleasantKenobi's dream of the Stoneforge Mystic unban in modern as an example. It was banned in standard when it was there and modern wasn't a thing yet. When modern became a thing it was banned there. For years Vince(PK) had been rallying the troops to get the card unbanned in the format. Some people at WotC finally sat down and did some testing with it and found that it would be reasonable to make legal. It was a good choice to do that. The card is good but not so good that it broke the game. This needs to be constantly done with all cards on the ban list. It gets tiresome trying to keep up with the cards that are printed versus the cards you can actually play with. There shouldn't be any shame in unbanning a card just to find out that it's too good and have to ban it again later on. Just look at Golgari Grave Troll as an example of that. These are the correct mistakes to make. Not printing whatever cards you feel are good in a draft environment and possible standard just to have them warp a whole separate format because you didn't feel like doing any testing with it. If you're going to keep giving us cards that are so strong they get banned in multiple formats just do away with the reserve list and give us the power 9 in standard already. That's an extreme scenario but when you have cards that end up on the restricted list in vintage that are also in standard that's saying something about the power level of these cards. There's no reason a 3 mana planeswalker should be on any list with cards like Timetwister, Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, etc. but the sad reality right now is there is one. There's also a two mana planeswalker that's on the legacy ban list with cards like Library of Alexandria, Vampiric Tutor, and Tinker among others.
I know I've digressed and went a few different directions as to why people are upset with MaRo's statements throughout the article. I felt it was needed to kind of put the whole subject of innovation vs. balance into perspective though. Yes, innovation is good. We want new things, cards, mechanics, etc. But we also want to have a fun and balanced experience as we play the game. We don't want things like Oko continuing to be a nuisance moving forward. We also want to be able to feel comfortable in expanding our horizons as players and moving outside of standard and drafting. People enjoy playing pioneer, modern, and legacy. Don't take that enjoyment away from them. Do some R&D within those formats as well. The people that work at WotC play the game. I'm sure that among the group the knowledge of the card pool across all formats is amazing. Try using that to your advantage. Obviously design your cards to meet the theme and expectations you have of the set but then in testing let the people on those teams run wild. Tell them to break the card. Tell them to goldfish a turn 4-5 win at an 85% or higher rate. If they can then put that deck they designed up against current meta decks and see how well it does. If it maintains that then consider not printing it. There's roughly 250 cards printed in a standard set but there's probably three times that amount designed. If one card doesn't work out there's always fall-back options. There has to be some sort of happy medium between both innovation and balance when designing cards for a game this complex. There also has to be a way to test new cards in various formats at a minimum within the current meta of that format. As players, find cards you potentially like for the format you're assigned and try to see how well it works within various decks in the format. If it seems to be fine then print it. If there's a lot of issues with it, scrap the design and move on. Understand that eternal formats don't care about set themes, but rather synergy. It's time WotC R&D start caring about the eternal formats just as much as they do about standard. It's also time they quit relying on the B&R list to "fix" their mistakes permanently. It should be a temporary thing with the potential to unban it in the future. Find ways for players to be able to effectively interact with cards on the ban list instead of just leaving them there and forgetting about them. Let's get a card that says something to the affect of players cannot spend life in lieu of mana for a cost and unban Mental Misstep. Or let's design a mechanic that can act as a counter to dredge. Let's make that one card that removes all copies of a spell from the stack to play against storm. We have the storm scale. Instead of just not printing things that use those mechanics again let's find ways to make them more fair to play against. These things can be achieved, they just have to be thought about as cards, mechanics, and sets are designed. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. Have fun and happy brewing.
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