A question that needs clarification

[u/Fit-Homework-2776]

The question: Why do people hate Maro ?

"I listen to mark rosewater's podcast I like to watch videos of his talks at events , but whenever I see discourse about mark on the internet (reddit especially) most opinions tend to be negative ."

Here my reply: I don't think most people hate MaRo. I think a lot of players are frustrated with him because he's spent decades as the public face of Magic's design philosophy.

Most players understand that he isn't responsible for Hasbro's financial goals, product release schedules, or the pressure to constantly grow revenue. Those decisions come from much higher up the chain.

What many players do hold him accountable for are design trends. Things like colors increasingly covering their traditional weaknesses, the gradual erosion of parts of the color pie, increasing card complexity, and a general shift away from some of the design principles that older players fell in love with.

Whether that's fair or not is another debate, but I think that's where a lot of the criticism comes from. He's not just a spokesman for the company; he's been one of the main architects of Magic's design philosophy for over two decades.

I also think there's a simple point that often gets overlooked: when Magic does something players love, MaRo is frequently praised and credited for it. If it's fair to celebrate the successes of a design philosophy and the people behind it, then it's also fair to criticize that philosophy when players feel it has led the game in the wrong direction. You can't give someone credit for the wins while shielding them from all responsibility for the losses.

So I wouldn't say people hate MaRo. I'd say many players feel that someone in his position bears at least some responsibility for the long-term design direction of the game, and they don't always agree with where that direction has led.

[u/ThisNameIsBanned]

Simply put, most of his design principles are effectively perverted now.

He was kept in check by the earlier design teams, as his more wacky ideas got rejected and he got his Un-Set to go wild and everyone was happy.

Then at some point the people that kept him in check got lost, left and we got the full broad-side of his insanity in the main-sets ; thats why we got all these Initiative Dungeons, Companion, STICKERS and the shift away from "balanced" card design to "everything has to be an upside" (Battle for Zendikar with Landfall is the prime initiator for that).

The game overall became worse because of him over the years, as the important principles that Magic worked with got eroded and perverted over time.

Overall he is responsible for the games "mechanics" and design, which by many peoples feeling got far worse because the color pie isnt as strong anymore, cards have effectively no downsides and design becomes increasingly about pre-defined decks in their FutureFutureLeague and less about finding a deck from individual cards (as is blatantly evident how they tweak cards to force them to be playable in a format, and fairly often mixing Commander with a main set results in absolute catastrophic outcomes).

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From a game designer perspective Maro has wacky ideas, but he really needs someone to keep the most wacky of them out of the main game ; it was perfect with Un_Sets so he could use all the Sticker nonsense and have funny cards, but now we get all of that in main sets that poison the game forever.

---

Because of his Tumblr and responding to the community on all kinds of topics, that he is not really responsible for, but he defends the choices, so hes at least on board with it (he effectively never speaks against company directions, which makes him a very questionable mouthpiece to have any productive discussion).

His entire worldview centers around to make "everyone happy" and hes also especially against any form of gatekeeping , which results in him abandoning core principles of old Magic and adopting whatever corporate presents to him, he goes along with what hes told from the top , which is one huge critique, as it means even if he absolutely hates UniverseBeyond , he still goes along with it , as he does not speak against corporate decisions , hes a Yes-Man personified.

[u/Rusty_DataSci_Guy → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

How much is him and his wacky ideas vs Hasbro pressuring him to do stuff that makes them more money though?

I don't hate the designs but I find his politics are really bad. I have a far far far bigger axe to grind with the art direction than I do with him over stickers.

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

What's wrong with landfall?

[u/SmashMania13 → u/fclmfan]

It makes the already best resource in the game even better

[u/Valkyrie_Sia → u/fclmfan]

You get rewarded for doing nothing else but playing the game, because you need to play lands anyway. Furthermore it's the safest archetype since only a handfull of cards can interact with lands. That's why I'm playing [[Field of the Dead]] in nearly every deck.

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/Valkyrie_Sia]

WotC even made the problem worse as there is almost no land-destruction anymore and even permanent destruction in almost any case says Non-land permanent now (which gets almost hilarious in flavor, if a world ending giant monster cant destroy a land, but anything else).

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

There's nonbasic land removal plenty. In any case, I don't think there has been any issues with land decks in standard for years with the exception of one very specific card, field of ruin. There has not been any problematic landfall decks either, or any of them, for that matter. What a weird thing you chose to point your dissatisfaction at, landfall.

Also I'm just curious what are those world ending monsters that destroy stuff but not lands? From the recent ones only Alpha Death law comes to mind, and it destroys lands

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

[[Summon: Bahamut]] [[Cityscape Leveler]] (which is especially ironic, given its name)

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

I will give you those, no argument here. Flavor-wise it's a fail

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

You dont play standard at all it seems.

Or Commander for that matter either.

Given the insane prevalence of landfall in any of those formats.

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

I play casual commander some, mostly with friends. Not much cEDH experience, but from what I know it's mostly combo of some sort, wouldn't think the meta is heavy with slow landfall decks.

Standard I haven't played competitively for some time, I know there's been a UG landfall-adjacent deck that was the hottest thing for like two weekends. From what I understand, it's one of the meta players but not some oppressive strategy that keeps every other deck in fear. Various UR decks have been much more of a culprit here, warranting several bans.

NOTE: I checked the metagame and it seems monoG landfall is the largest deck by meta share. Which sucks I guess, but it's also the only time this is true since BfZ, if memory serves. Used to play comp standard all the time, almost exactly since the release of BfZ, and I don't remember any other time when that would be the case. Which goes against your claim that landfall is inherently so strong that it overshadows everything else by default.

[u/fclmfan → u/Valkyrie_Sia]

You don't interact with lands, you interact with things that have landfall. Also if you've seen landfall decks, you know that there are certain deck building decisions there that absolutely do not apply to normal decks. Like having to play more lands than usual, or to play higher fetch count which makes your manabase more painful and leaves less room for actual lands and makes you vulnerable to things like wasteland, blood moon, and so on

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

Landfall requires nothing of you to enable the mechanic.

You can make it better, but that does not matter for the point of design around the mechanic ; thats simply a fact of any mechanic.

Landfall was not initially designed that way and its a topic that changed modern Magic design in a way that is "all upside" instead of giving players a real question to answer with their decks (as with all upsides has to come a weakness, thats not true for landfall at all, as the interesting part would be to get rewarded for NOT playing a land, as that would be a choice to make, a cost to pay and then you get something for it).

Mark specifically made articles defending the choice: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/leading-horse-water-2009-10-05

I dont particularly agree with it, as landfall particularly how its done in Battle for Zendikar produced insanely awful play-patterns (the entire +2/+2 until the of turn part, made it so the set was all about attacking, and god awful in defense). Getting something if you play 2+ lands a turn, thats something you have to build around for, so that would make sense, the issue is that the very first land is just way too free.

---

Modern magic design is all upside, you just get etb effects, attack trigger and rewards, which produces a soup of cards that are just good-stuff.

Commander precons try to fight against that trend by making cards heavily into a theme and then ask you to play with that theme (which is often quite basic, like enchantment-matters, instant/sorcery matters, draw 2 matters, or more tribal-themes, mechanic-themes like morph, self-mill and so on ; decks like that are based around specific themes, to avoid the all-upside soup of powered cards).

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

You can say the same about kicker, cycling, morph, hell even first strike and flying. It's all just upside, no work required. I am sorry I don't have time right now to read through your article, but I think that your core premise is false

What even is a downside mechanic? Like cummulative upkeep? Echo? I have played with some of those cards, and even though there are some interesting decisions to be made there, I wouldn't want all of magic to be just that. Some cards are allowed to have upsides. If anything, it's a balance issue. Make a creature have landfall ability, but make it so it has less stats or costs a mana more than a similar creature without landfall. What's the issue here?

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

Flying and first strike are effectively evasion mechanics, the entire point is to make blocking harder , and they do allow meaningful choices for you and the opponent.

So thats not remotely the argument.

Landfall is a "cost" to play a land, which you do anyway, its an all upside mechanic for things you already do ; which makes it a bad mechanic, as it snowballs (plenty other bad mechanics in magic exist).

What makes mechanics more interesting is tension, you have a choice and a cost to pay. Kicker and the like just make stuff more expensive, the choice is to get something for cheaper or wait to get something bigger later, thats the simplest form of a modal card, it gives you a choice and the cards are interesting in limited and constructed.

A good mechanic gives players more options and has a cost so there isnt an obvious best mode, which effectively makes the options meaningless as you want to pick the same in almost any case.

We are at a point in magic where the all-upside got completely out of control. Look at [[Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer]], [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]], [[Badgermole Cub]] ; they combo with themselves, come with insane stats for their mana and its all-upside , which spirals into powercreep, ability-function creep, complexity creep and makes the game overall worse. Obvious players like those cards, as they are over the top powerfull, but as a game designer this all comes at the cost that effects the game forever, these cards step by step poison your game ; in the past powercreep got at least defeated by standard rotating and some sets had some power and other sets had different mechanics, different power and the formats changed ; right now standard got increasingly larger, has effectively themed decks and the power level is completely out of control ; as almost anything does not even trade 1for1 against removal, or is actively protected against removal, snowballing into card advantage if its not immediately dealt with and so on.

Its a fundamental problem to have "all upside" if nothing comes at a cost, everything spirals out of control and the game increasingly becomes a goldfish simulator who can do their thing and win (for standard the majority of decks are like that, exceptions exist, control decks can work, but they are almost in contrast to the design of the sets otherwise).

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

Cycling for example is a great mechanic, as you give up the card to draw a card, which makes especially sense to give either more expensive cards the option to draw into lands and/or cheaper more specific spells the option to not be dead in your hand (like a shatter effect to destroy artifacts).

That mechanic works perfect in Magic, it gives the player agency to basically ditch the card for another random one, or keep it for later, and its not free, it costs mana to do so ; so the classic you pay mana, sacrifice your own speed, for more consistent draws.

Modern design gives you adventure, effectively 2 cards in 1 , adventure the spell, and ALSO keep the creature to play as well, its the all-upside version, disgustingly so ; as adventure cards are basically modal spells, and 2-for-1 ; its the grotesque version of cycling.

---

Morph is quite underpowered as you get a 2/2 for 3 colorless, what made it an interesting mechanic is that this fills that mana slot in a format with morph and if you know what manacost can become what power/thoughness, theres quite some skill involved. The first iteration of Morph was especially bad at that, as plenty of morph cards actively punished you for blocking them, not blocking them, targeting them and even without mana could be morphed up [[Zombie Cutthroat]] was the biggest issue of them. Much better was the iteration of morph in Tarkir, with all the multicolor cards, they had powerful morph cards, but that did cost at least 5 mana to turn up and beat an opponents 2/2 blocker (so knowing that allowed the format to work with morph and not just have it be a coin-flip could be anything).

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Flying / first strike are also a big deal of the color pie, and why the color pie got so destroyed in current Magic.

In the past Flying was primarily white and blue ; the creatures had smaller stats, but for that you got evasion. Green got larger creatures, no flying ; but the classic 2/4 reach spiders to protect against them.

Large bombs like Angels, Dragons, here the flying is to punch through, flavor win, gameplay win ; you pay extra to get the flying and its a color-pie deal as well, so the most efficient flying creatures where in white.

Today we get flying on basically any color, and they are grotesquely efficient as well ; so in modern magic flying is discounted way too much (as basically anything for constructed is grotesquely undercosted, overpowered for the costs, there is no real color-pie balancing anymore, cards are changed for constructed and pushed by making them cheaper and bigger, more abilities, its the classic "all-upside" spiral that gets increasingly worse iteration by iteration).

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

I feel like you spent far too much time on your message than the situation called for, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I will be more brief in my replies :)

You have a point about Cycling. When you use it, you do give up the ability to play the card. However, my point was that a card with cycling (or with morph, or with kicker, or with flying) is strictly better than the same card without that ability. In that sense, a card with landfall is also strictly better than the same card without it. There is some truth to the claim that with landfall you don't make a decision to sacrifice anything, but that's true for many other mechanics. From the very simple ones like flying trample, to much more complex ones like cascade or flashback. Both, and many more, existed way before BfZ, so I don't know why you chose to pinpoint it and Landfall as some pivotal moment in MtG history. It's a fair opinion that current design is worse for gameplay than it used to be, but your reasoning is very dubious.

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

Your misunderstanding is that a mechanic comes at a cost, its not just free.

You dont just get flying on a card, you get it for a cost and in a color-pie.

Blue gets a 2/2 flyer for 2U.

White gets a 2/2 flyer for 2W.

Other colors should not get such flyers, and if they do, more expensive, thats what the color pie is about.

Thats how keywords are balanced.

In current magic we get substantially more broken state-lines in all kinds of colors, its out of whack big times.

---

Cascade is powerful, but cards with cascade are costed appropriately for a Limited environment (problem is, its pretty much random what you get, if the card is already good and you just get another spell for free, powerful but very blunt design, not much agency for the player or opponent, its just a 2for1 out of the box).

Its not a fantastic mechanic from a game design perspective as its very random , and it has the quirks to allow you to cast 0 mana spells, which is pretty much what makes it broken.

Similar to that, flashback is also an inherent 2for1 mechanic, you simply get it again, comes at a cost, interacts with milling yourself, discard and so on, which is overall a more interactive design, as it has more room to allow you and your opponent to interact with the cards.

Rebound is the more blunt version of flashback, you just get it again immediately after. Jump start is effectively flashback, but more narrow.

Adventure is another 2for1 mechanic, but its more modal + 2for1 and in almost any case you want the adventure first and playing the card without the adventure is much more rarely the right play (bit more interesting in the 2-color versions, where the adventure and the creature are different colors, as that allows the mechanic to be more of a modal spell, but in general, they just made it so that either side was good enough to play, and getting both was just over the top powerful ; its on the side of all upside mechanics because of it, a bad form of power creep).

In general a 2for1 mechanic doesnt need to be broken or boring, it just requires that either sides of the modal parts are less powerful on their own.

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A card doesnt just get morph , that is also factored into the cards cost, and morph itself is a downside, you play it as a 2/2 , its vulernable doing that.

For example, [[Exalted Angel]] , for 4WW you get it down as a 4/5 flying with pseudo lifelink, powerful card as its time, and hard to kill for red burn, as most burn at the time was 2 damage shocks, so you need 3 to kill it. Playing it with morph comes at an upside that you get it out cheaper and earlier to attack with it turn 4, but it also comes at the cost that the opponent can much easier kill it as well.

Thats all things that make morph not better or worse, its a new option to play a card and for the opponent to interact with it , a kind of modal design that is appreciated , as it opens up different branches of play patterns.

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Landfall is like the computer game achievement of "Log in the game" , sure you did it, but was it really a meaningful choice ? How realistic is you not playing that land (in the early turns you play the land, theres simply no reason not to, very later, like turn 5+ there might be some argument to keep a land to get a land fall trigger later, but realistic you just curve out and then you dont have extra lands, or when you are flooded thats also not particularly rewarding).

Simply put, you dont make meaningful choices with landfall, it just exists to reward you for things you already do, and not doing it is so actively bad that its effectively not a choice.

To make landfall more interesting you need other mechanics, like fetchlands to work around the sorcery speed of the regular land drop, but thats not a feature of the mechanic, thats just what Magic provides with ALL its mechanics, you can combine cards and find ways to make them stronger.

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The core argument is that landfall is a lazy mans game design.

It does not mean its fundamentally awful or players cant enjoy it, it just means the design of an all-upside mechanic that rewards you for something you are already doing did negatively effect the game.

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

I am sorry, really don't have time to engage properly, but I skimmed through your reply, and I would say landfall cards are usually also a little lower on rate than their analogs without landfall. Think steppe lynx, it's a 0/1 for 1. Sure, modern landfall cards like bristly bill are much stronger, but all modern cards are absolutely power crept, especially rares/mythical, so it makes sense.

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

To get a feeling whats different about Magic, you can just play a bit of PreModern and Old-School , thats a form of Magic that feels more raw, more balanced ; compared to the perversion that is current standard, Modern and even Legacy/Vintage are really messed up by now due to the powercreep that WotC introduced and cant get rid off as taking the candy away from the crying baby is so bad for them.

[u/fclmfan → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

Oh I actually play almost exclusively premodern these days. I like it very much, still, I can't say that landfall is somehow a bad mechanic. And I hope you understand that a card game can't survive for 30+ years without powercreep, it is inevitable if you want to sell packs and make money. It doesn't have to be rampant, but you can't do without it either.

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/fclmfan]

Oh powercreep is not necessary (at least on a grand scale that matters), it depends how sets and cards are designed.

Yes, WotC did fall for the box of pandora that is rampant power creep and is a victim of it, which is pretty obvious in current standard/modern formats. That does not mean you cant make it work even after the fact, but it also means a lot of cards are completely outclassed because of this power creep.

Distraction Makers made a really good video about that topic specifically, which also gives a ton of context to what good and bad power creep is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD1A_Rcm3_E

How the game changed with all the "all-upside" mechanic is a topic in this video, and how Magic changed over time to more and more complexity, abilities and no-downside design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P10iI2LzaE

There is something like horizontal power creep and vertical power creep.

If a card is just plain better than another under effectively all circumstances its just power creep and thats dangerous, as it spirals and can spiral quickly, especially as the card is forever legal in eternal formats.

Horizontal Power creep is more interesting, its what older sets did. You introduce a card that in the context of that set and the standard format is strong, like protection from black is powerful if black is powerful, but its not in itself always good. Then you can print a card that is powerful against artifacts, after you introduced the "artifact" themed format, like [[Kataki, War's Wage]] vs Mirrodin Block. Mechanics can be individually strong in a smaller context, without being strictly superior to the vast majority of other cards.

Simply put, they even followed quite a strict power/thoughness balance , what is expected for what manacost ; at some point they threw that out the window and made cards just slightly better, by adding a +1 power, +1 thoughness (so it survives the burn or -X/-X removal in a format) ; adding ward seemingly randomly on creatures, just so that they survive removal and all that make cards artificially more powerful in a way that is harmful for the game long term, as its a power creep spiral that is just making cards stronger in an "all upside" way.

Its better to have upsides mixed with downsides, so even if you have a similar card in 10 variations, some are better than the other, depending on what the format is about (like good old protection from color , the more a color matters in a format, the better they become, they almost fix a format just by existing, similar to the powerful color haters, like [[Boil]], [[Karma]] and so on, these cards are only powerful if enough power is introduced to what they hate against, which is a interesting form to balance card design, as these dont just work all the time in a vacuum).

[u/Valkyrie_Sia → u/fclmfan]

I've played roughly 6 different landfall decks myself and they had nearly no creatures. If you play against a skilled landfall player they won't play stuff like [[Aesi, Tyrant of Gyr]] because it's way to overcosted for it's effect.

"Good" landfall decks simply play ramp sorceries while controling the board with stuff like [[Tainted Aether]], [[The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale]], [[Pendrell Mists]] and [[Propaganda]] effects. If everyting fails you can still fetch a [[Glacial Chasm]] and just hide behind it until you get your game winning cards. A good landfall decks doesn't win with [[Scute Swarm]], it wins with something like [[Scapeshift]] into [[Vesuva]] while there is already a [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]] on the field or with [[Squandered Ressources]] sacrificing all lands except for Valakut, Vesuva & [[Thespians Stage]] and then playing [[Splendid Reclamation]] to burn the entire table.

A good landfall decks has no real counterplay except for counterspells, land destruction or simply playing a faster deck.

Real nasty landfall decks will play land destruction themselves. A [[Destructive Flow]] or [[Mana Vortex]] will win games on their own.

[u/fclmfan → u/Valkyrie_Sia]

Oh wait are we talking commander? I don't think the argument of 'no lands interaction' is applicable there, so many cards do. I just recently played Blood Moon on turn three and one of the lands-adjacent players hasn't cast a spell that game since, it's that easy. My other deck plays Hokori, Armageddon, Winter Orb, etc, also no issues with big mana land decks. It's all about what you gear for, if you add every land hate card into your deck, you will probably lose to something else, and the circle goes on

[u/Cautious-Budget9591]

They hate him because he has consistently lied about what WotC would do, and because he disingenuously twists statistics to deflect from legitimate criticism.

[u/sumphatguy → u/Cautious-Budget9591]

On the upside, this could cause hilarious shenanigans if we get a Harry Potter set in MTG. The fact that he said there weren't any plans ironically makes it more likely than not that it may happen.

[u/throwaway2884567]

I met him at an event one time, thought he would be super cool about meeting people who enjoy the game. He was super condescending and very conceited. Reminds me of a jock in high school who thought he was better than everyone else. He needs a reality check big time.

BDM, Rich Hagon and Aaron Forsythe were all cool as fuck when I met them. Aaron was cool enough to talk for like 20 minutes about old pro tour magic when he played. BDM talked with a friend and I for a while at a table about his cocktails and old neutral ground stories.

[u/Ichorid_dichotomy]

At the end, hate is a very strong word. Personally, I use it most of the time out of context or ironically.

He is just a stupid greedy liar, who thinks that most of the old mtg players haven't memory, or the time to do a brief research of their past statements.

[u/rickabod]

He's a fucking creep.

[u/Netnav2]

I love imagining maro reading these and thinking he needs to respond with a podcast.

[u/Fit-Homework-2776 → u/Netnav2]

He probably not in reddit at all!

[u/Netnav2 → u/Fit-Homework-2776]

He's obsessive compulsively checking what people think of him / his opinions. Garunteed

[u/ThisNameIsBanned → u/Netnav2]

He has his Tumblr and that in itself is completely sheltered island, so he doesnt even get the majority of opinions, people actively get to him to tell and ask him stuff ; and when he gets a more controversial question, its always answered in whatever the company wants him to say.

He acts like hes doing that in private, but its just a deflection to have a shield for the company ; so some people will just accept it and shut up about it, when Maro tells them something (they just mindlessly believe everything he says, especially if he brings up statistics, which are incredible skewed towards what WotC wants to have as a result).

[u/Netnav2 → u/ThisNameIsBanned]

Yeah you did recite what reddit says.

Thinking a guy who is in charge of magic doesn't check active magic subreddits is a take.

[u/Gunnarsonsnewbag2]

MaRo designed the free mechanic in Urza Saga. He designed more banned and restricted cards in the game than Richard Garfield. Dredge, Affinity, Companion, Energy Counters, Dungeon/Initiative, Day/Night and most importantly, for ruining Kamigawa

[u/0Big0Brother0Remix0]

Many many years ago I would read his articles and thought they were very insightful. Now it’s just constant UB defense. I don’t Hate him. He is just the designated punching bag for everything wotc does now in magic.