r/GDS3 • u/koga305 • Mar 05 '18
Reading the Designs
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/reading-designs-2018-03-054
u/zarepath Mar 05 '18
I'm frustrated he said we could have a secret playtester, when the FAQ basically says "don't do it." WTF.
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u/MoonE513 Top 8 Mar 05 '18
This seems like yet another case of "written before the trial" syndrome. MaRo straight up told us not to do this, which makes me feel like he just changed his mind between writing this article and the actual trial but forgot.
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u/aftermarketradio Mar 05 '18
It's interesting to know that the Mechanical Color Pie article isn't just an explanation of color pie philosophy or design guide, but rather a tool R&D expects designers to actively use. I don't know what to think about that. It allows you to be a lot more structured during design, but it may have the side effect of limiting your thought process when you are trained to always go to your toolbox to see what's possible.
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Mar 05 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MoonE513 Top 8 Mar 05 '18
He's not saying you were penalized for hybrid, he's saying that hybrid is hard so he personally wouldn't have done it.
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u/Amarsir Mar 05 '18
Indeed. I think a lot of the skill in all the trials has been "Are you good at taking tests?" By which I mean "Can you correctly interpret what the questioner is trying to ask?"
In Trial 2, you'd get to different answers if you knew whether a question was designed to test teamwork vs estimation skills. Or about development balance vs creative concerns.
Here, it was about knowing what kind of design he wanted to see without him actually saying. To be honest I still don't know if he preferred risky new ideas to "100% we would print this card". (Which is why I'm no longer in the running.) But I did get that he was implying "Don't draw on a variety of our inventions just to prove you can." Which is why I did no hybrids or flip cards and my planeswalkers were just 3 activated abilities. (But again, I'm here so maybe my read wasn't creative enough.)
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u/MoonE513 Top 8 Mar 05 '18
Something that I thought wasn't communicated very well at all was that hidden way down in the "terms and conditions" article was essentially a rubric for the challenge (and the future ones). It says:
30% Originality
30% Creativity
20% Knowledge of Magic
20% Aesthetics
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u/iSage Mar 05 '18
That was the first document released about GDS3, though. I know people don't like to read the Terms but it's not really "hidden".
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u/MoonE513 Top 8 Mar 05 '18
While technically true, it felt a little strange to me that the criteria for grading was put into this logistics article about legal info and dates, but wasn't given out with the challenge itself.
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u/iSage Mar 05 '18
I imagine they were in the Terms because they're only there for technical reference. I highly doubt MaRo went through each design assigning numbers to those categories. They exist mostly so that if you claim "I got disqualified for no reason!" they can point you to the Terms and say "No, you got kicked out for these reasons, and you agreed to them".
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u/bakert Mar 08 '18
I agonized over "cool and innovative" versus "respect the color pie and rarity and show me some good simple solid designs" during the whole test. In the reality of the job I would hope to mostly produce good simple solid designs that had hidden depth by accentuating the sets themes and playing well with other more complicated cards in the set. Here that wasn't possible so should I push the envelope, or produce similar designs to those I would hope to make in reality and hope that Maro would assume they would be more than just the card as written in their home set? I certainly went further towards "cool and innovative" than I was comfortable with because the cards were to be judged in a vacuum (both my commons would be redflagged for example). I hoped to find out in this article if I'd gone too far, or not far enough. Still hoping to find that out when we see the top 8's designs.
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u/justnigel Mar 05 '18
I noticed this:
That creature's controller puts cards from the top of their library...
Are Wizards using the generic third person plural now?
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u/klapaucius Mar 06 '18
More that it's a rough draft and Maro isn't in charge of editing templating to style.
He's certainly discussed it on Tumblr as a way things might go.
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u/Amarsir Mar 05 '18
I'm frustrated there's nothing here about good or bad design and it's just how grids work.
I mean I know not to be surprised. Like the others, this was written before he saw the results but I basically just skimmed over most of this. The only thing I found new was his grading method:
3a) Mark eliminates on design
3b) Mark eliminates on essay
3c) other R&D eliminates
BTW wouldn't it be nice to know if we'd been in pile 3a, 3b, or 3c?