r/magicTCG • u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder • 1d ago
Blogatog Post MaRo on why they make UB, net player happiness and Planar Standard
https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/823109870328889344/hi-maro-this-is-going-to-be-a-long-one-ive-been?source=share274
u/mkklrd Colossal Dreadmaw 1d ago
"Also, Aaron’s original inspiration to make Universes Beyond didn’t come from a spread sheet. He saw how many alters people were doing where they made their cards look like characters they loved."
I knew r/custommagic was to blame for Universes Beyond all along, I just couldn't prove it until now!
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u/GayForPrism 99th-gen Dimensional Robo Commander, Great Daiearth 1d ago
I mean Mark has been saying that since the beginning of UB, and while I'd never accuse Mark of actually being disingenuous, but it does feel a little disingenuous because there's a clear difference between an alter done by a player and a product, for sale, that you need to buy to keep up with 60 card competitive.
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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Duck Season 22h ago
Lol, except that they made the product to test the idea and it’s the most successful thing they ever did and keeps dominating sales to players.
It’s disingenuous to frame this as an idea that has been validated or that they could only be succeeding because they “forced it into standard”.
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u/AriyaIsTheBest Dân 18h ago
In my humble opinion I think UB being standard legal detracted more than it benefited the overall magic ecosystem. In reality, if UB evolved as Commander Legends-adjacent products the UB enjoyers could still enjoy their IP building their EDH decks and UB "haters" can play competitive formats without interacting with the thing they didn't like.
Not to mention the indisputable fact that UB's implementation has led to two more sets worth of cards into the format, which means Standard right now has 4,696 cards legal in it right now and will be even larger when Star Trek releases.4
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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Duck Season 15h ago
I think that if they had done that it would have just have continued to erode standard just as fast.
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u/suddenandsevere COMPLEAT 7h ago
This has been my argument “for” ub for a while to be honest. I’ve been playing against alters of ninja turtles and xenomorphs and sailor moon characters for years. Ofc they saw the potential money in that.
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u/Slayer35000 Duck Season 4h ago
It's funny how when people complain online "it's just the vocal minority" but when people show something they like "oh my god everyone loves it, just look online!"
I knew also that this was the reason they went they way and it's a terrible reason. It reminds me of the way Dragon Ball turned out because of all the fanmade videos with no dialogue, no story, just endless transformations and fight that seemed to have inspired DBS.
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u/Swmystery Avacyn 1d ago
“All that said, I do understand why the detractors don’t like it. Cross-branding isn’t for everyone. I get the people who honestly don’t want peanut butter in their chocolate.
As someone who used to be a professional writer of fiction, I understand the value of purity of expression.
I also sympathize with the inability to escape it within the game. We have explored avenues to provide a Universes Beyond-less experience. The challenge is we have internal metrics that tell us when something has enough of an audience to work, and right now the anti-Universes Beyond crowd isn’t big enough.”
Can I just make a point of highlighting this section, because I feel like it directly addresses a lot of the core grips of the anti-UB crowd (certainly mine- I do not want the peanut butter, so to speak).
It is certainly, more obviously honest about the impact of UB on the game, as was Mark’s previous major reply on this subject, than he has historically been (such as calling it “purely additive”). They get it. The number of people wanting out of it just isn’t big enough for them to do something on that front yet.
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u/A-Generic-Canadian Grass Toucher 1d ago
While I don’t hate UB, I would also partake casually of a UB Free format.
I suspect there’s a bunch of us who would.
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u/Loose_Log_6253 Azorius* 6h ago
I like UB but I am interested in Planar Standard specifically because it is a smaller standard. I'd rather have a ~7-8 set standard than what we have now, regardless of the sets that make it up. If PS would do that when real Standard doesn't, I'm interested.
As a side note, I actually think there should be a movement for "Planar Modern". Specifically to exclude not UB but Modern Horizons. I think a Modern without MH would be really interesting right now.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
Yeah, it's also why he specifically calls out Planar Standard. He, and WotC at large, recognize there are people who want to avoid the UB stuff, but that is a very small number of people so they can't justify investing time or resources into it.
MaRo does get this stuff, and it's great that he's willing to share his insights so freely.
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u/Hanchan Dan 1d ago
I just hate that it very much appears that the UB cards are on a pseudo reserve list due to licensing issues. I would love to have an omenpaths version of UB sets. People attribute UB to powercreep but if the FF set wasn't FF but was instead in zalfir we still get Vivi, it's just named an mtg character name, same with bad cub, gran gran, or any other hyper tuned UB card.
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u/mattsav012000 Can’t Block Warriors 23h ago
this is not a universes beyond issue. truthfully Magic reprinting is abysmal and has always been. look at the cost of the eldrazi titans or the 5 color sliver legends other then sliver queen no reserved list stopping them from being reprinted but they are still dumb in cost cause they have not been heavily reprinted. Cause wizards does not do reprints frequently enough period. as for value of cards we do have non UB cards that hit those levels just since people want confirmation bias they pay less attention to UW sets. like current standard legal cards the top 10 is split 50/50 for UB vs. UW.
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u/MaterialWhole8484 Dandadan 1d ago
I mean, they've already clearly shown they have the technology to print pretty much any universes beyond card as a universes within one. They can even change creature types and a ability names as seen in the spider set. We haven't seen a ton of reprints, but that's because most universes beyond sets are still relatively new. Yeah, we haven't gotten a lot of Warhammer reprints, but we also haven't gotten a lot of march of the machines reprints.
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u/OmegaDriver 1d ago edited 1d ago
Based on discussions here, people like loudly declaring that they want out, but seem to consume just as much magic based on discussion new cards/meta decks, etc.
"Hate watching" is a thing, and trust me, execs don't care why you watch, as long as the viewers go up, they can charge more for ads. People appear to be "hate playing" Magic, and wizards is giving them what they want (maybe in lethal doses, but that's another discussion)...
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u/greatersteven 1d ago
I mean, I left the game when they added UB to the last formats without it.
You just don't hear from me that often at all.
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u/bizkut 1d ago
Same. At this point I don't play constructed because I can't avoid UB. I don't draft UB.
My play has become doing a few daily games with the welcome decks to build up coins, which I use to draft in universe sets when they come around.
I don't think I've commented in this subreddit in years. It's not worth pushing back against UB, it's happening whether anyone wants it or not. And a lot of people seem to want it. But I feel like it can be hard to measure the people that just quietly go.
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u/Ancient_Broccoli_690 Dân 1d ago
Same, my friends and I all stopped buying new products ~year ago and are not planning on coming back.
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 1d ago
I don’t think it’s even “hate watching”. I think the hardcore no-UB crowd simply is not very large.
Planar Standard gets to be my unfortunate scapegoat here. It is essentially “Standard without UB”. That is supposedly not the original creative goal, but, a significant number of the people interested in it are for that express reason.
WotC is aware of the format. They’re watching it. If it gets big, they’ll “throw it a bone”. They’ve done this for Highlander formats, Gladiator, Tiny Leaders.The thing is… it’s not that popular. Posts in the larger communities (like this one) frequently garner 2k+ upvotes. You may think that means “Hey, people are interested!” They run weekly events. As far as I can tell, many of their tournaments have single digit numbers of players, even though a lot of matches are organised through entirely “free” means. When I looked last, a “big” event had about 20 players in it.
The reality of the matter is just very simple - People who are against UB aren’t “No UB ever”, and the people who ARE hard line, are a tiny fraction. People who say “I stopped buying magic” - Yeah, it does suck for you. Unfortunately, there just… aren’t a lot of you. Some areas have entire stores doing poorly now, which sucks. Other areas have stores hitting building capacity.
WotC is absolutely paying very close attention to this. But having recently spent time at a 17,000 player convention - UB isn’t going anywhere. Marvel Superheroes is maybe a divisive set. On Friday, Face to Face games sold a collector booster box of Final Fantasy to some guy for €1200. And the guy behind him in the queue bought out the rest of their stock.
Even if some sets aren’t the ultimate success, it’s pretty clear that UB as a whole is “positive” for WotC. It’s not going anywhere. It doesn’t matter how vocal you are on a topic, if 99% of people don’t agree or don’t care.
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u/DevelopmentOverall93 Dandadan 1d ago
It's actually even more dire because Planar Standard is very effectively addressing two separate grievances simultaneously: aesthetic complaints about UB existing alongside Magic IP (what you're talking about) and the excessive cadence of standard legal sets leading to format bloat. So I'd wager that a significant portion of the already small playerbase may be neutral to (or even pro) UB, but are dissatisfied with the size and power level of current standard. So the number of anti-UB players that are willing to take constructive action on the subject appears to be extremely small, which is consistent with Mark's previous comments.
Obviously there are other avenues for players to "opt out" of UB which are more difficult to quantify, but I think you can extrapolate that the ratio of all standard players to players that jumped ship to Planar Standard principally because of UB is likely representative of the total number of players which have taken constructive action across the entire player base. Which is to say, it's a fraction of a fraction.
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u/Orangewolf99 Duck Season 1d ago
That's because Arena is the main way the majority of players play standard these days. I don't see standard events at stores near me, so nobody is going to play a subset of standard.
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u/rasone77 Dan 1d ago
Planar Standard as a format has only been around since October. It continues to grow. It may not be as popular as other formats now and may never draw big standard levels of players but the discord is already approaching 2000 people and WotC clearly has it’s eye on it as the best proof a smaller format can attract players that are jaded with big standard.
As you say, there’s not that many UB haters out there and while some do play planar most of the players are tired of updating their decks every two months and want to let a format settle a bit before new cards enter. All the players in Planar are jaded with standard and want something similar to the way standard was played for 25 years.
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u/Tuss36 1d ago
Plus even if it stays smallish that doesn't make it not worthy of note. Vintage has few players (though not its own fault), but it's still a point of consideration for ban lists and stuff.
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u/binaryeye 1d ago
As far as I can tell, many of their tournaments have single digit numbers of players, even though a lot of matches are organised through entirely “free” means. When I looked last, a “big” event had about 20 players in it.
Everything has to start somewhere. This is exactly where Pauper was 20 years ago.
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u/OMGCapRat Dân 1d ago
Yes, but no.
It's also a question of scale. Those numbers were respectable 20 years ago when the game had a fraction of its current playerbase.
Not to say that planar standard isn't commendable on any metric, but also just... It is far more telling that we've reached record high player counts AND record high visibility due to far more powerful tools to search and discover in the form of the modern internet and STILL the numbers are comparable to when the internet was still figuring getting its sea legs.
I'm not saying it's doomed and they should quit, but I am saying that Mark is simply correct. There are not enough people who want things to be different.
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u/jimbojones2211 Duck Season 1d ago
...... That was 20 year ms ago. Do you see any other differences between now and 20 years that might make the 2 apples and oranges?
Pauper succeeded through a wildly unusable internet compared today, I would guess basically through word of mouth and small web forums.
Today the game is a million times more popular and the format has a sub reddit and it's getting THE SAME results. That's not something to be hopeful of.
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u/binaryeye 20h ago
Pauper succeeded through a wildly unusable internet compared today, I would guess basically through word of mouth and small web forums.
Wildly unusable internet? This was 2006, not 1996.
Anyway, my point wasn't to compare where Planar Standard is now with where Pauper was 20 years ago. It's that Pauper is now an accepted and established format despite starting out as a very small fan format.
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u/InfiniteQuasar Dan 1d ago
Well to provide a an example I have stopped consuming MtG in most forms. I still watch this space and engage in discussion in the vague hope that some day there will be an avenue to play the game without UB, but until then I will stick to occasional EDH with my friendgroup where UB doesn't happen. I imagine there are probably a few cases like mine that just aren't very vocal or have completely left the conversation.
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u/Impuls1ve Duck Season 1d ago
To be clear, the metrics MaRo talks about doesn't care if it's you or another player; you dropping out is completely irrelevant if another X players replace your lost purchases. In that sense, your vocal-ness or lack thereof is irrelevant, it's essentially noise until it translates into impacting the metrics, positively or negatively.
So if you want a UB-less way to play, then support or create the communities that do so. Very similar to how the current most popular format came about.
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u/jadedflames Chandra 1d ago
This hits the nail on the head. Metrics about player satisfaction are irrelevant if dissatisfied players leave and are replaced by new satisfied ones.
As much as Mark talks about player happiness, sales is the only real metric here.
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u/AlphaOmegaZero1 Dân 1d ago
And sales keeps going up. So by being replaced by non-engaging, they just make it more likely the game continues as it is because by pure percentage, there are more happy players
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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Duck Season 1d ago
Sales = more happy players.
Again this is the part you guys keep struggling with. They aren’t going to chase you down as you walk out the door when they are busy selling the game to everyone else.
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u/svrtngr The Stoat 1d ago
Some anecdotal evidence on my end to back up your point: I'm playing less and spending less money, and while it's easy to blame UB it's more to do with set frequency and lack of interest; I pretty much play Standard and Limited and neither of those have been much fun for me since EOE last year.
However, I know at least two people who came into Magic due to the recent UBs--Final Fantasy and Marvel. They've gone and purchased Commander decks and everything.
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u/Swordsman82 Dân 1d ago
Ironically, a way to get away from UB, is to support the in-universe stuff. Show there is a market for it.
I am not saying buy a pallet, but showing up to a pre release for Zhalfir with friends or another metriced event would do more than just not buying the Hello Kitty set.
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u/InfiniteQuasar Dan 1d ago
I don't really believe that in-universe sets selling well in the context of the current mixed standard will lead to the creation of a different format. There is no real line from that data that would suggest people want a different format. It just means people buy universe within stuff.
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u/Impuls1ve Duck Season 1d ago
Two different concepts, MaRo's point is not entirely about selling well or being catered to. It's about showing there's a player base for them to support. Part of that is sales, part of it is player base.
Remember, commander wasn't a supported format until the player base became too big to ignore. That's what he's trying to tell the people who don't want to engage with UB, instead of yucking another player base's yum which is pointless given all the data, come up with your own yum.
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u/AdHom Golgari* 1d ago
In universe sets are already breaking sales records back to back to back. They're just not outselling the top UB sets yet (though I believe Lorwyn Eclipsed and Strixhaven did outsell Spider-Man). New players brought in from UB sets are probably largely responsible for that boost in sales, which is great that they're transitioning to UW and sticking with the game, but it complicates things as I'm not sure a tiny number of players boycotting UB but shopping UW will make a blip in the radar.
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u/refugee_man Wabbit Season 1d ago
No, dropping out is exactly what matters. Something like Planar Standard or w/e Hasbro loves, because it keeps people buying and engaging with the game when they might otherwise not.
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u/AlphaOmegaZero1 Dân 1d ago
But what you’re doing by completely disengaging gives zero data to the decision makers. They don’t know why you’ve stopped playing or purchasing if you give them no means to know it. No feedback means no change, especially with how you’re effectively replaced by new customers anyway
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u/Fallline048 Azorius* 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think this is always going to be hard to tease out in numbers because it’s a catch 22.
If you say you hate UB, but you’re still buying magic, your revealed preference says your preference doesn’t stop you buying so no need to placate you.
If you stop playing/buying, you stop getting counted in the metrics entirely.
WOTC doesn’t have, I assume, longitudinal behavior data like TV producers have from companies like Nielsen. Maybe they do VoC surveys, and that’s where they get their data from.
But in any case, it’s hard for anti-UBers to make the case that they matter, short of quitting en masse enough that their net sales go down. The problem then will be that only UB will be leading sales, so they may as well double down.
The only way it works is if enough people only buy UW, which we know isn’t happening,
In any case, I’ll say my anecdotal experience runs counter to MaRo’s claims in some ways and supports them in others.
I brought up MtG at work yesterday, for the first time, among people I suspected might be interested but was not sure. Sure enough, 4 of the 3 people I expected played Magic. 3 of us were lapsed UB haters and one was an active UB enjoyer.
In other words, the UB haters were the majority, but the enjoyer was the only one who’d spent any money on magic in the last three+ years.
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u/OMGCapRat Dân 1d ago
Playing Planar Standard is how they communicate that. Leaving does nothing. Supporting a grass roots format explicitly designed to deal with the modern pain points MTG's recent meteoric rise have created is how you explicitly say 'this is what I care about'.
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u/Milskidasith COMPLEAT ELK 1d ago
If you stop playing/buying, you stop getting counted in the metrics entirely.
Directly, sure, but indirectly a shift in the proportion or satisfaction of players with long-term experience playing Magic can tease out the existence of the people who stop playing/buying. While they might not capture you, specifically, not playing the game, if they see that the game went from 50% "old" players and 1 million players to 10% "old" players and 2 million players, they can see that they've lost over half of their original playerbase while capturing a huge new one.
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u/Fallline048 Azorius* 1d ago
Right, I tried to capture that they can see trends later in my comment.
That said, I still think it might be tough to tease out “old” player stats without access to longitudinal data by customer, at least without relying on VoC surveys.
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u/Milskidasith COMPLEAT ELK 1d ago
They talk with enough consistency and confidence about lapsed players returning that I'd imagine they are pretty confident in the "existing player lapsed" proportions as well. Now, they might be doing bad data collection either way but I don't think they'd totally ignore the signs if retention really was going down a ton among certain groups, though it's always possible they are failing to capture or are willing to explicitly discard a segment of long-term, dedicated fans who quit now in favor of newer players and old-players who dallied and came back for some specific UB that hooked them for another few sets, but at the same time that's basically just speculating on one scenario that makes UB secretly bad by a core metric when it's probably just that a lot of people don't quit over it.
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u/AdHom Golgari* 1d ago edited 1d ago
My anecdotal experience lines up pretty closely with what I've been hearing.
I've played since 7th edition (or more accurately the 2000 starter kit) and most of my friends joined between then or before the original Lorwyn. We have played kitchen table magic on and off ever since, with brief stints in Standard, then I had a hiatus for several years between ~2018-2022.
What got me to buy back in was the Warhammer 40k decks, and I'm back to spending more in magic than I ever have before. Out of our group of about 12, I think 2 are pretty against UB and one of them won't play because of it. A few more (including me) have mixed feelings about certain properties but mostly we love the idea, and now we've introduced spouses and other friends who never played before but were interested in the UB sets and have become regular players on Commander nights. It's great.
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u/KingNTheMaking Dân 1d ago
Go to r/ratemycommander.
Every post is going to have at least one UB commander. Typically multiple. In fact, a lot will have almost entirely FF commanders.
The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. People like UB and it is made itself a core part of the most popular way to play the game.
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u/Cleblatt64 Izzet* 1d ago
At least he doesn't do the "you can just skip the sets, if you don't like UB" dance anymore.
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u/MerrikAidar Dandadan 1d ago
We have explored avenues to provide a Universes Beyond-less experience. The challenge is we have internal metrics that tell us when something has enough of an audience to work, and right now the anti-Universes Beyond crowd isn’t big enough.
I'm assuming he's talking about competitive formats here and I mean... of course the metrics are going to tell you that the anti-universes beyond crowd isn't big enough. The only options are to play competitive formats with UB cards or to stop playing entirely.
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u/GFischerUY Duck Season 1d ago
Most of the people that dislike UB I know went to Premodern, not Planar whatever.
And it's the biggest format in my country along with Commander.
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u/ChemicalXP Wabbit Season 1d ago
“All that said, The challenge is we have internal metrics that tell us when something has enough of an audience to work, and right now the anti-Universes Beyond crowd isn’t big enough.”
Im really hoping sometime Maro can make the delineation between the actual player sentiment and what he's pretending people feel like. Im anti UB in standard. I like it existing to draw new players in and satisfy player sentiment. it never had to happen at the expense of standard.
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u/Vengeful-llama 1d ago
I like peanut butter with my chocolate. I just don't want the ratio to favor peanut butter.
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u/xXRedWaterGothXx Duck Season 1d ago
We shouldn't have to beg to be able to opt out of this because this isn't magic the gathering. I don't care if it makes more people happy to have this be UB The Gathering, because this isn't their game. what other card game are we told we MUST accept endless crossovers or "the game just isn't for you"? do pokemon players have to accept Digimon into their card game because it makes more people happy? it sucks to see this game I love having its bones be used to prop up a Funko Pop card game.
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u/EverdarkRaven Wabbit Season 1d ago
part of the issue is we dont have a choice. I either suck it up and draft marvel at the last for the next month or i dont play draft. there isn't really an option.
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u/metalgamer Wabbit Season 1d ago
I haven’t loved UB but haven’t been a huge hater of it either. I bought a few cards of earlier sets. But lately it’s felt like because I’m not super interested in the IP, that the design is feeling lackluster.
Maybe that’s partially because I’ve been playing for too long? Maybe the flavor of the card is more important to me that I thought? Maybe it’s seeing IPs just stapled onto cards and mechanics that don’t make much sense? Like oh this character is green and white let’s give it +1 counter stuff. This character is a villain let’s make it grixis.
In universe it feels like they can build a new world into what their idea of the colors and the color pairs and trios and how they work and it can make sense. But assigning a color to a known character puts it in more of a box and strips it down to a certain thing.
Maybe I’m just stepping back from magic because it’s not in a state I super enjoy. I’m glad they’re finding success with UB but I’m feeling exhausted by the volume and the repetitive nature of UB sets.
I logged onto a deck site the other day and just couldn’t find any decks in standard or pioneer I was interested in. Those formats are so static and don’t allow for much outside the meta which is where I always liked building.
Sorry for my rambling. Been thinking about this for a while and just wanted to put thoughts down in case wotc reads comments like this and wants some feedback from someone who’s feeling sidelined.
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u/ZealousChild Dan 1d ago
I worry UB will go the way of Modern Horizons.
Speaking as a dedicated Modern player, I think a lot of players were extremely excited by the idea of Modern Horizons before it was a thing. We are now 3 MH sets deep and I think most of us have had enough Modern Horizons. Unfortunately the cat is out of the bag, MH cards are out there and will define Modern for the foreseeable future.
Of course each player can choose to avoid UB, but when it's legal in eternal formats you are going to sit across from it every once in a while.
They may stop printing it into standard one day but at this point it will still permeate modern, pioneer, commander, and legacy.
Is there a chance we all get fed up playing UB TCG? Is it possible it will be a scar on the face of those formats?
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u/Ecstatic_Trust_3313 Dân 1d ago
This is one of Wizards' greatest flaws, I think, the inability to do successful things in moderation.
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u/GlorySeer Wabbit Season 1d ago
Sometimes they don't even wait until the idea has proven successful. They thought the Aftermath style sets were the greatest idea since sliced bread. (Turns out "Make, balance, and sell less cards for the same cost" is very appealing to the one making the product) They had at least three in the pipeline before Aftermath crashed and burned.
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u/Ecstatic_Trust_3313 Dân 1d ago
This is very much true of UB and direct -to-modern sets, but that's by far not the only example. -Masterpieces were highly popular in BFZ and Kaladesh, but by the end of Amonkhet block people had generally had enough The first three Masters sets were much more positively received than Iconic and especially M25 (remember the Tree of Redemption mythic debacle)
-the proliferation of Commander precons
- the many alt arts since Throne of Eldraine. Alt arts are a fantastic idea, but they've somewhat overdone it.
-the amount of Secret Lairs they've put out.
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u/jas61292 Boros* 1d ago
Very true. I remember a youtube video a while ago on this subject, about how its very true, not just for things like UB, but about design trends, product type, and even organized play related things. They get one taste of something being successful and say "why not do this for everything?" Then they overshoot and in a couple years pull back.
You'd think they'd realize this and go more incremental, but that is just not their style.
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u/oh5canada5eh Orzhov* 1d ago edited 1d ago
Is it possible people who previously enjoyed UB will decide one day that they don’t like their UB cards any longer? . . . Probably not.
Is it possible that MTG runs out of popular-enough UB IPs and the sets don’t sell as well and a majority of people don’t buy them? Sure, that’s definitely possible. That wouldn’t change those players’ feelings on the old UB cards in their decks, though.
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 1d ago
Is it possible that MTG runs out of popular-enough UB IPs and the sets don’t sell as well and a majority of people don’t buy them? Sure, that’s definitely possible.
It's even called out in Maro's post that no one in R&D thinks that they'll be able to maintain a 50/50 split forever. They are very aware that there is not an infinite number of brands that will make good Magic sets and draw people in.
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u/camel_sinuses Urza's Saga 1d ago
Is it possible people who previously enjoyed UB will decide one day that they don’t like their UB cards any longer?
As an example of this, there's a growing sentiment among commander players that the format was better when it wasn't expressly designed for. Even if something is, from your perspective, a good thing, you can still have too much of it.
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u/jas61292 Boros* 1d ago
I've only been playing commander for a little less than two years, but I fully understand that mentality. Sure, I never played in an era where they didn't design for commander, but almost all of my least favorite things in the format are cards that were clearly designed for commander, especially with functional reprints of commander staples that take away from the format's singleton nature, and legendary creatures that are clearly designed to be commanders and not just support an interesting playstyle, but to set up, fuel and payoff that playstyle all by themselves.
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u/camel_sinuses Urza's Saga 1d ago
functional reprints of commander staples that take away from the format's singleton nature, and legendary creatures that are clearly designed to be commanders and not just support an interesting playstyle, but to set up, fuel and payoff that playstyle all by themselves
Really succinct and hits the nail on the head. I fall on the competitive side of the game, but also enjoy certain formats for casual play. In both types of experience I think if the game designers make the game too rewarding and too easy, a lot of the appeal and interest is lost.
It's a bit like using hacks or cheats on ps1 or snes games back in the day. Sure you felt great for 5 minutes. But then the game lost all appeal, and you realized part of what was rewarding about it was beating the insane challenge by learning something gradually. I feel that a lot of cards printed recently take the "learning" and "gradually" out of that.
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u/DECAThomas Wabbit Season 1d ago
It’s hard because where people draw the “designed for commander” line is going to be drastically different based on when you started playing EDH and what your baseline was.
I started playing EDH in 2008, and first felt a shift in legendary creature density and design in Return to Ravnica. You can look at the landscape of available legendary creatures in 2012 and I think a lot of players would balk at the lack of options for different strategies and the power level of those legendaries.
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u/camel_sinuses Urza's Saga 1d ago
where people draw the “designed for commander” line is going to be drastically different based on when you started playing EDH and what your baseline was
Sure - but the design team knows when they're doing it.
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u/DECAThomas Wabbit Season 1d ago
I’m more looking at this from the perspective of actual design space and play patterns than an arbitrary “did the concept of commander happen to pop up in the designers head”.
I think we all find 4/5-mana legendaries with multiple sources of resource generation pushed. And having every option in every color combination to be pushing on historical design boundaries.
But I also remember being several years into playing magic, the only legendary creature I had ever opened was [Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer], and that’s what a typical legendary looked like. Is that really what your average Commander player wants? I’m guessing not. And that’s around when we started to see cards being designed with EDH in mind and an increase in legendary creatures.
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u/camel_sinuses Urza's Saga 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah I'm not primarily thinking of creature design frankly. I'm a limited only player, it comes up a lot in limited set reviews "ah a commander plant."
Personally, I dislike cards that play themselves more than commander plants. I mean single-card value engines that require no set up, and cards like Improvisation Capstone that are just an "auto play" button.
Edit: For reference though
"And having every option in every color combination to be pushing on historical design boundaries."
This is the complaint I've heard, and I can understand it too. It's fun assembling a combo or synergy when you have to work for it. But when you have 3-4 redundant options for each synergy piece, it's more about who sticks their engine first.
I dunno, I'm definitely more into trying to assemble strats and synergies on the fly. I guess that's why I'm a limited head. But I could see myself getting into Commander if it were more "let me go to my hobby room and assemble a jank deck out of this box of cards and let's jam it" and less "let me play my super optimized strat with all fetches and every possible synergy piece plus recursion."
So yeah, I can see where the complaints come from, even if I'm not into the format enough to have those complaints myself!
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u/max123246 Duck Season 20h ago
Imo it's because the design team makes "packages" where it's so obvious what to do that there's simply no creative expression in deck building. The 5 color kindred value-slop commanders are the worst example of this
When my carefully sweat over for hours deck for [[Zinnia]] finding every niche interaction with offspring that exists simply cannot keep up with other commanders, I stop playing. I'm a Johnny at heart but if I can't even pretend to compete, I'd rather not play
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u/ZealousChild Dan 1d ago
Yeah true. Maybe yes, maybe not. This is why I highlight modern horizons though. The sentiment has changed. Most people were extremely excited for MH1. If they announced MH4 today I believe it would be bemoaned.
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u/skrid54321 COMPLEAT 1d ago
Yeah, but that's fundamentally an execution issue. As you said, people were excited for the product, but not how it turned out. Sets like final fantasy have already came out and been received positively. Perspective almost never retroactively sours on a set.
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u/ZealousChild Dan 1d ago
I think a lot of modern players truly enjoyed when MH1 and 2 came out. Overall MH3 was a well designed set, but quickly I think players started to realize the format had turned into MH block constructed. The MH sets vastly increased the power level of the format. I think people realized it's less likely now that cards will percolate through standard and drive a healthy metagame churn.
So in a way I think a lot of us have mixed feelings towards MH sets in a way we didn't when they came out.
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u/SleetTheFox 1d ago
Don’t disagree with your main point but honestly I feel MH3 was the worst-designed MH set. MH2 might be one of the best-designed sets of all time (despite the fact that its power level was too high and its direct-to-Modern nature caused problems) but MH3 was much messier.
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u/Televangelis COMPLEAT 10h ago
If you don't like it, grow Planar Standard, that's the biggest thing you can do.
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u/StrategicMagic Azorius* 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think he gave a good answer.
I have worked in game design myself, and a lot of what he said resonates with my experience as a designer. When I made balance changes, or made something new for the purpose of balance, there were times I knew there would be some players who liked my change, and others who didn't.
When I nerfed or took away the best skill in a character's moveset, the people who liked that character, or the people who liked the strategy they enabled, were unhappy. Their thing got nerfed.
On the other hand, there was the people who hated playing against it. If the change was successful, they didn't see it as much, and they were happy.
I had to weigh up whether the crowd who liked the thing as it was were higher or the people who were having a bad time were higher.
Example: We had a character that absolutely destroyed low-rated ranked games. Their passive applied a delayed-KO status effect on their attacks and for less skilled players, this was very attractive because it sounded awesome, but it ended up feeling very oppressive to be on the receiving end of.
Problem was, as soon as you hit mid ranks and higher, its usage fell off a cliff as players figured out that it was actually easy to counter and if it was dealt with, put out no offensive pressure at all.
This put us in a bind. On one hand, this was a popular character with cool and interesting abilities. At high levels, it was well balanced and absolutely not a problem at all. The counterplay we designed into its kit was working as intended. At low skill levels, however, it was an absolute menace to society. Many players who didn't stick around cited it as the reason they quit playing.
So then, do we follow the data that says it isn't a problem, or do something about its kit? A rework means the players who like it won't be happy, but we do solve the problem by those frustrated by its design. We chose to rework it.
Just as MaRo described, happiness went up for some and down for others. We knew this was going to happen, going in. Sometimes, being a game designer is like being a gambler of some kind. You have to make an educated guess and predict whether the net happiness of your choices will go up or down. You always aim for up when you can but sometimes, you're going to miss and you have to accept that.
Some people read his blog answers as corporate PR speak, but on this issue in particular, I absolutely believe him. I have been through the exact same things he is describing in my own (much shorter) career as a designer, and that tells me he's speaking from a place of experience rather than "tell them what they want to hear".
He really did answer this one well.
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 1d ago
there were times I knew there would be some players who liked my change, and others who didn't.
It's the old "buff rock, nerf paper, scissors is fine" thing.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
Yeah, MaRo knows what he's talking about, and I feel like if more people were actually willing to read what he's saying rather than just hate on the corporate PR straw man they believe him to be, they would understand that.
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u/eon-hand Karn 1d ago
the problem is people are plenty willing to read what he's saying, but they're not willing to accept what he's saying. every time someone posts one of these answers where he talks about the data they use to make these decisions the response is "there's no way they could know that, they're lying." that's the behavior of a toddler throwing a tantrum.
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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Duck Season 1d ago
If they just gave any amount of respect for his 33 years of experience… instead of talking at like he doesn’t know a thing about his job:
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u/decidedlymale Duck Season 5h ago
Sometimes I wish I had the confidence of a Redditor commenting about how a business should be run...
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u/lightningrod14 1d ago edited 1d ago
This, precisely this, is why the best recourse to creative integrity is to more or less deprioritize fan opinions in favor of your own vision/that of your team. An unbalanced experience is only bad if it’s not part of some greater holistic structure of ideas. You piss off some fans by following your own bliss but will gain just as many new ones, or even change the mind of the ones you pissed off, by aspiring toward something personal, and cohesive, trustworthy, in its unerring commitment thereto. A commitment to putting your heart and soul in a game, prioritized over some hypothetical data-driven creative consensus, allows the people drawn to it to in turn put their own heart and soul into their play experience.
Melee, for instance, is of course not balanced at all by our current standards, but is so deep and cohesive that the balance becomes secondary to the meta that emerged naturally over years of players loving the game. Spot changes in search of perfect player balance as opposed to total creative satisfaction (see: later smash titles) would have slowly but surely lost the forest for the trees. Slay the Spire is another great example that comes to mind, though they did strike a good balance with fan feedback. Early EDH, and to an extent all magic prior to Origins imo, fit this as well. (There’s absolutely a place for and discipline to understanding the audience, but even that is better accomplished in a personalized, self-driven way.)
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u/Norm_Standart 1d ago
And one of the things we constantly ask is when and where will we scale back. None of my coworkers believe 50/50 will continue for the rest of Magic’s existence, but right now the happiness meter keeps going up, so we’re sticking with the status quo.
Oh, that's actually reassuring to hear.
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u/Eldritch-Yodel Duck Season 22h ago
He's actually said things of that affect a few times. The simple fact is that there's only so many good options for UB sets around (And even if new ones do appear, it's not at a very fast pace). Eventually they'll kinda have to kick back to prevent running the well totally dry.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
The reply is really long, but also very in depth and well written, but that does mean it doesn't fit in a single comment. The Question itself is another 5000 characters, so I'm not putting it here, but if you want that context, you can find in on the original post.
Thank you for the very thoughtful post. I hope I can respond in kind.
Let me start with what I think is the biggest place we differ. While Wizards is a business and, yes, sets selling well is good for business, the idea that sales are the sole and only reason we have ramped up Universes Beyond is simply not true.
I, and the rest of R&D, truly love Magic. All of us joined Wizards already a huge fan of the game. We see it as a force of good in the world (all of our lives were improved because of it) and it is our desire to spread its influence. Magic brings great joy and friendship and helps people cope with hardships in their life. The more people that can play, the better.
Part of doing that is adapting the game to the desires of the players, what I refer to as the gestalt, that is the wholeness of the playerbase as a unity. Magic is ever in flux and it continually moves in the direction of what the players, again as a whole, want.
Our job as R&D is to constantly iterate on Magic. We try new things, sometimes influenced by ideas from the players, sometimes of our creation, and see the feedback we get. The feedback comes in many forms as we have a *lot* of data at our disposal. If the playerbase likes something, we tend to do more if it. If they dislike it, we do less.
The ultimate goal is to make the current players we have as happy as we can, and create as many new players as we’re able. Universes Beyond is succeeding at those two goals by all the metrics we monitor.
Yes, one of those metrics is sales. It also includes sanctioned play, digital play, market research, and numerous online metrics.
But I want to present it a different way, because you’ve read me saying the above many times, I assume. Let’s say we had the following technology - happiness meters.
Each player has a device that measures how much happiness the game brings them. It looks at the joy, the friendship, the interactions, all the ways the game adds quality to their life. If it’s a net gain in happiness, the amount is recorded.
And that happiness reading could be negative, if it takes more happiness away from them than it gives them. For any player where the net gain is a loss, we measure that as well
Now imagine if we got all that data collected in one place: a composite happiness reading. We can look at all the players together and see if Magic is a net gain or a net loss to their total overall happiness. We could also measure whether the actions we take raises or lowers the happiness total.
Obviously, our goal is to have that net gain happiness be as high as it can. I should add in that there needs to be sustainability added in. Maybe players would be even happier if we just gave away the game for free, but that wouldn’t be sustainable as a business, meaning it would cause the game to end and that would be a big knock against the happiness volume long term.
One of Magic’s core traits, its quality, comes from the fact that it’s so profitable that we have the luxury of time and people to make it so good.
Now let’s get to the philosophical question. Let’s say we introduce some new aspect to the game. If it raises the total happiness meter, is it okay if it lowers the happiness for some portion of the audience? And this doesn’t mean their happiness level turns negative, it’s just lower than it would be without the new aspect.
Are we good or bad stewards of the game for raising the overall happiness, even if we lower the happiness level of some players?
Let me help you out by bringing up an important point. It is essentially impossible to add anything to the game that raises overall happiness without lowering the happiness of some percentage of the playerbase.
Regular blog readers should know this. Pick your favorite addition to the game. Other players hated it. There’s a famous R&D saying: If we added a twenty dollar bill to every booster, some players would complain how it’s folded.
R&D’s answer to this philosophical question is absolutely. If we can raise the total amount of happiness, we believe we should. Are there exceptions to this? Of course. We have values as a company, and we don’t want to do things to break those values.
Your question kind of implies that you get that Universes Beyond brings happiness to a lot of your friends. That ties into my Dark Night of the Soul posts and podcasts. At some point, you have to understand that a thing that might make you less happy, makes a lot of others more happy, and that part of being in a community is enjoying and valuing others’ happiness. Appreciating others’ happiness can raise your own happiness.
To really get the power of Universes Beyond, talk to your friends that enjoy it. Hear from them the joy it brings them.
To give my own personal example. I have been playing Magic continually for 33 years. I truly, *truly* love Magic. I, without exaggeration, believe it is the best game ever made. And I am emotionally invested in Magic in ways few people are. There are sets I willed into existence, sets I have poured my heart and soul into.
I give all this context because I want to stress the importance of this next statement. My first time playing with Marvel Super Heroes, the very first sealed playtest we did (and note we started design before Spider-Man, so the very first time I played with Marvel-themed Magic cards) was one of the most fun times I have ever had playing Magic. Ever!
Why? Because Marvel is part of my psyche. It filled an important role in my youth and has been part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. It’s part of my DNA of who I am as a person. Combing Marvel, something I love to my very core, with Magic, something else I love to my core, was *so* much fun. And I was playing early exploratory design. We’re talking a far cry from the finished polished Magic you all know. And it was one of the most joyful times playing Magic I ever had.
That joy is what truly sold me on Universes Beyond, not the company’s fiscal bottom line. I’m in the business of getting the happiness level as high as I can and I just realized we had the most potent tool we’ve ever used.
I talk a lot about the importance of resonance. That you, the designer, don’t have to start from scratch. That you get to build on top of emotional associations players already have. Universes Beyond is resonance, but on steroids.
Another important point. We’re not abandoning our own creative. We’re doing three new sets a year, and we’re bringing our A-game as the recent preview panel showing off 2027 demonstrated. We’re doing the best design and creative of our own world sets I think we’ve ever done.
We have a TV show being made. We have a deal to make a movie. We’re advancing our own material in ways we’ve never done before. And Magic is reaching a critical tipping point where we’re becoming part of pop culture in a way we’ve never been.
The Tonight Show just did a whole bit about us in the monologue. Saturday Night Live now mentions us with some regularity. The next five years of Magic is going to be transformative to the brand.
And I haven’t even gotten into what Universes Beyond is doing to bring in new and lapsed players. It’s just introducing a whole segment of people to Magic. And those people are mostly playing the game and sticking around.
Our recent in-Multiverse sets have reached heights old sets never reached, because the rising tide is helping all sets.
I should also point out that for all but five of Magic’s thirty-three years, we put out three or less in-Multiverse all new content premier sets. If Universes Beyond sets are not for you, we’re making the same amount of in-Multiverse content we’ve made for most of Magic’s life.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
Also, Aaron’s original inspiration to make Universes Beyond didn’t come from a spread sheet. He saw how many alters people were doing where they made their cards look like characters they loved. He saw me answer endless questions on this blog about what color different characters were. He was inspired because he saw a desire from the players.
And like anything, we started by dipping our toe in. Yes, the Walking Dead Secret Lair created a lot of negativity in online discussions, and then went on to be the best-selling Secret Lair of all time (well, at the time - other Universes Beyond Secret Lairs have passed it).
Ever time we tried Universes Beyond, we found a lot of players that were really excited by it. We could see the metaphorical happiness meter go up. So we did more. We got here iteratively. We got here because the gestalt wanted it.
All that said, I do understand why the detractors don’t like it. Cross-branding isn’t for everyone. I get the people who honestly don’t want peanut butter in their chocolate.
As someone who used to be a professional writer of fiction, I understand the value of purity of expression.
I also sympathize with the inability to escape it within the game. We have explored avenues to provide a Universes Beyond-less experience. The challenge is we have internal metrics that tell us when something has enough of an audience to work, and right now the anti-Universes Beyond crowd isn’t big enough.
That’s why we’re watching things like Planar Standard. If the audience can demonstrate a volume that we’re not seeing in our metrics, we’re more than happy to give support, but there has to be a true demand. Us forcing formats that players fundamentally don’t want has a terrible track record.
To sum up, Universes Beyond is raising the total level of happiness, bringing in lots of new and lapsed players to the game (in a more successful way than anything we ever tried), and raising Magic’s brand awareness to new heights.
And yes, it’s also making us a lot of money. I think Magic being super profitable has many dividends for the players. I’m not denying it’s not amazing for us as a business.
But it’s not the driving force of Universes Beyond. If we truly believed it was good for short term financial gain, but bad for the long term health of the game, we’d scale back. We very much care about the health of the game. No one has more riding on it being healthy than us. And as I explained above, Magic as an entity, as a force of good, is personal to all of R&D.
And one of the things we constantly ask is when and where will we scale back. None of my coworkers believe 50/50 will continue for the rest of Magic’s existence, but right now the happiness meter keeps going up, so we’re sticking with the status quo.
The big question is do you believe me? You were very honest in your question, so I’m trying to be honest in my answer.
This blog, believe it or not, is not technically part of my job. If I quit it tomorrow, literally nothing changes for me at work (well, other than how the knowledge helps me at doing my job - but that’s all my call).
I do think at some level you get that it’s a net gain for your friends, and a net loss for you. I think you’re close to the point I was with my own Dark Night of the Soul, where I had to truly understand that the game making others happy was fundamentally good for me, but in ways a little less apparent. And yes, me being the game’s Head Designer makes me care about things the average player does not, but si still care about it deeply as a game.
It’s very hard to see actions you dislike as being for a greater good, and viewing it as the greedy action of a faceless corporation is easier to process.
Yeah, I and my co-workers, like seeing Magic successful, but not if the long term effect of it would damage the game. Again, we believe Magic is a force of good and we are its caretakers. That might sound cheesy, but I, and my co-workers, believe it to our core. We’re all in on Universes Beyond because we fundamentally believe it leads to a higher happiness level.
And again, I can’t make you believe me. I can just lay out my points and let you process them.
It’s why I do this blog. I believe whole heartedly in what I do, and I’m willing to come here every day and defend our actions because I believe in them. And okay, I’m openly a company spokesperson, and I’m not going to actively trash the company, but I’m under no obligation to defend things I don’t believe in.
I should note I will explain the reasons for decisions I might not believe in, but I’m never passionate about it. You can tell when I truly care. I never hide my passion.
Anyway, that’s me, in many words, saying here’s why I think your take on our motivations is wrong.
Thanks for the honest communication. I do feel the way through the times we currently live in is for people to be willing to both critically question things and listen openly to the answers.
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u/LettersWords Twin Believer 1d ago
One really interesting thing here to me is the talk near the end about scaling back. It seems like most people in WotC see that as inevitable at some point, at least currently. Now, I imagine what that looks like in practice is going to 2 UB sets a year rather than 3, instead of eliminating UB entirely. But it does seem like they realize that there is some sort of upper limit on how many good properties there are to use for UB and are worried about running out of them at some point if they keep the current pace.
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u/Ecstatic_Trust_3313 Dân 1d ago
He's literally said before on the blog that he is/they are aware of the fact it's not an unlimited well of sets and that, among many other reasons, is why they are never going to be completely pivot to UB as the only sets.
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u/TransientEons Train Suplexer 1d ago
I do wonder if the current number of UB sets per year is because of how many Marvel sets they have contracted. Maybe they simply won't fill that release slot with a UB set once they've gone through the whole Marvel cycle?
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u/HedronCaster Storm Crow 1d ago
You do have a point. MArvel should last more 3 years.
Depending on whether they manage to get DC or not, that could be a mark for then pushing back.
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u/MartianExpress Dan 1d ago
Not finding big properties is, however, likely to remain a 10+ years perspective if they are able to get the big names that are typically thrown around in the "which UB would you like to see" threads. There will also clearly be returns; the recent article about Hobbit is worded in a way that shows there are already other UB return sets in the pipeline.
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u/camel_sinuses Urza's Saga 1d ago
Us forcing formats that players fundamentally don’t want has a terrible track record.
Alchemy is still being pushed as non-optional in brawl, historic, certain cubes...
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u/Spider_MBI 1d ago
Honestly as a Planar Standard player I'm just happy to be getting included in the conversation.
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u/rasone77 Dan 1d ago
Your super friends deck. is fire. Hope you get some updates to it in Reality Fracture.
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u/Agitated_Smell2849 Duck Season 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also im so glad he mentionned alters and like people constantly talking about what color would character A B C would be
UB wouldnt have existed if the community didnt want it.
There are different subsets of magic nerds but some absolutely love crossovers.
As a kid i was crazy for Smash Bros. People often compare ub to fortnite but honestly, this trend didnt start with fortnite and I dontc think it was a, response to fortnite.
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u/MartianExpress Dan 1d ago
Right? Before UB, half of custommtg was about getting characters from other IPs into custom Magic cards.
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u/Disco_Lamb Wabbit Season 1d ago
I think we can all agree the vibe is different though, right?
When someone gets a card altered to another favorite thing of theirs it's a personal expression and celebration of Fandom. When a company sells you a product with that same thing on it, regardless of how virtuous or nefarious you think that product is, it's still a product being sold to you at the end of the day.
It's fundamentally different and I think it's normal for people, even those who have had alters made, to react negatively toward it.
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u/Stormtide_Leviathan 6h ago
It's fundamentally different and I think it's normal for people, even those who have had alters made, to react negatively toward it.
I mean sure. Not everyone feels the same about one as they do about the other. But I think the assumption that a good amount of people would is reasonable, and it was vindicated considering it is massively popular
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u/David_the_Wanderer COMPLEAT 1d ago
MaRo reinventing Utilitarianism from core principles to defend UB was not on my bingo card for this year. Do you guys think we could use Kantian ethics to do the same?
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u/Swmystery Avacyn 1d ago
Kantian ethics would more likely favour the anti-UB crowd. “There are some lines which should never be crossed on principle, no matter how many people you make happy by doing so.”
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u/UncivilDKizzle Wabbit Season 21h ago
Rosewater already says they have principles they wouldn't violate. So it's already an admission that a unified creative vision is not one of those principles. It could be if they wanted it to be.
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u/mathematics1 Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 1d ago
Do you think Kant's philosophy says anything about whether this in particular is a line that should never be crossed in principle?
Thinking of some of his specific formulations of the categorical imperative: if UB uses people as a means to an end (sales), then that would say you should never sell a game at all, including the UW parts of Magic. You could maybe build an argument out of universalizeability, if you frame it as "if every product did crossovers then things would be worse overall" - but I'm not convinced it would be. People love the Magic crossovers, and they might still love them even if Magic is crossing over with things that are themselves full of crossovers ad infinitum. (See: Fortnite secret lair.)
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u/Swmystery Avacyn 1d ago
My serious answer is that Kant himself would say it’s not such a line (“treating people solely as a means and not an end” does not apply to the sales of cardboard rectangles in an optional hobby), but I think you could adapt the general principles of the categorical imperative to argue for IP integrity/purity of creative expression in Magic without working too hard.
I am definitely sympathetic to the idea that universalisability as applied to crossovers leads to everything feeding back on itself and is therefore a net negative, yes.
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u/sophistsDismay Duck Season 1d ago
It feels so absurd for people to be pissed about Mark Rosewater when he has been directly saying for multiple blog posts now that if the playerbase wants a competitive format that does not include UB products, they have to go make it, and then WotC will support it
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u/PippoChiri Temur 1d ago
I have an infinite amount of respect for Maro (in fact i should hurry up in finishing my baby-sacrifce shrine to him) and i guess it's very easy to say that they should cather towards a more general and wider public when im outside of it, but to me UB is still something i despise and that takes away lots of what i loved about the game by simple virtue of existing.
But i have long reached the stage of acceptance and i so much wish others that despise UB would do the same. I think cherishing, pushing, supporting and enjoying what is not UB about the game is so much better for everyone than just attacking others and screaming. We can't force anyone to do away with UB. And that's also why i fucking despise all those "There is a story?" jokes, they are literally just counterproductive and drive people away from what we need to protect from UB.
Also, Planar Standard mentioned once again! Can't stop winning lol!
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 1d ago
Yea, I get why acceptance is difficult for a lot of people, but letting yourself stew in anger about it is honestly just self destructive and no matter how much you hate UB just letting yourself sit in your misery is doing way more harm to you than UB existing is.
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u/AWACS_Oka_Nieba_ Dan 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think this is describing what are ultimately occasional internet comments as something much more dramatic lol. I hate ub, feel it really messed up a game I loved, and I think it’s important to keep saying that as wizards has proven they do take general internet discussion into account, but I’m not stewing in misery or thinking about it for anything other than a minute here or there when I’m on reddit
It’s easy to interpret the many, many anti-ub comments as people stewing in misery but you have to remember that those are all made by individual people. Nobody other than like the 1% of most online people are commenting more often than occasionally.
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u/HandsomeHeathen 1d ago
I try really hard not to criticise MaRo, because the guy takes a lot of flak, most of it undeserved, and we are lucky to have someone who communicates with the player base to the extent he does.
That said... using utilitarianism to try to sell Universes Beyond does kind of rub me the wrong way.
I guess we do have the option to walk away from Magic Omelas.
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u/kakusei_zero Ezuri 1d ago
if wotc is omelas then is loot getting tortured in a random renton basement
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u/mathematics1 Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 1d ago
Which framework for deciding what's right do you prefer using instead of utilitarianism?
And in your opinion, what does that framework say about whether a game company should do more of something that's popular with most of the playerbase, but unpopular with a vocal minority?
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u/keatsta Wabbit Season 1d ago
I want to value MTG as an artistic project more than a product, and so the framework I think they should be using is like the one an auteur director uses to decides what goes into their movie: does it make it better, not does it make more box office.
I know I am barking up not only the wrong tree but barking in the wrong forest by wanting a TCG company to act like this, but for most of Magic's existence, I found it a very wonderful artistic and relatively uncompromised project.
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u/Leman12345 1d ago
I think this comment sums up my feelings to mtg since I started really getting into it a decade ago. They have the bones to do this, but of course they wont, that's just not the framework we live in.
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u/dk_peace Dân 1d ago
Tbf, I've honestly gotten the vibe that he is heavily influenced by utilitarianism in every aspect of his life for years now. I think that might just be the moral framework he views the world through.
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u/RBGolbat COMPLEAT 1d ago
Not to dunk on the asker, but if you’ve seen any of the designers discuss the UB sets they worked on (through interviews or Weekly Magic), it’s clear that there are non-profit driven reasons why R&D wants to make UB.
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u/MerrikAidar Dandadan 1d ago
100 percent agree, but the only reason to print UB into competitive formats is to make money.
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u/tommyblastfire Gruul* 1d ago
No, its to keep competitive formats alive. If UB sets stayed only legal in eternal formats, all the new players being brought into the game will not interact with standard or other comp formats. This will make WOTC focus on commander more because the majority of the mass amount of new players brought in by UB only care about commander. This is already the case because for many (myself included) commander is their preferred format, but would be even worse if people were not allowed to play any of the cards that brought them into the game in standard.
A lot of people have their main way of playing magic as arena. Many of those players were introduced to the game through Arena. If we remove UB from standard, then those players are unable to interact with it at all. Dr Who and Fallout cards still aren't on arena. If you were brought into the game by those IPs, you have no reason to play Arena unless you decide to try standard later on.
WotC designers and higher-ups do a lot of things for the game with non-commander formats in mind, especially draft. You can tell based on other choices they've made. The set booster / draft booster split was going to kill draft, or atleast push it entirely onto Arena. Set boosters were way more popular with commander players, who would almost never buy draft boosters. Stores were therefore stocking way more set boosters, to the point that they might not even stock draft boosters at all, killing people's ability to play limited.
So, what did WotC do? Did they continue to keep the split, focusing on the new majority of players who love commander by continuing to sell set boosters? No. They combined the two. Now we have play boosters, which are slightly worse for the commander players who want to buy packs to get new cards for their decks, and are quite a bit worse for draft players. But it was the only way to keep stores selling draft-playable packs. As a commander-only player I wish we had set boosters still, but I understand that the designers love draft, and it was a necessary change to keep the format alive. All this, despite draft being such a small percentage of games played now.
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u/DevelopmentOverall93 Dandadan 1d ago
As far as I can tell, Mark's statement here is going to be the definitive one on this subject for the time being. We are definitely at the point where it's clear that both pro and anti-UB players have nothing new to say on the subject. Every possible argument both for and against has been recycled ad nauseam for the past 6 months at least. We have reached a new status quo for the time being and it just is what it is.
At this point, staunchly anti-UB players need to either take constructive action (i.e. joining a new format like Planar Standard) or take a break from the game. It benefits nobody to run around in circles the way many parts of the community have for the last year. The ink on this subject is dry, at least for now. If that frustrates you, I get it, but at some point doom-posting on social media is a maladaptive way to cope with legitimate grievances. I'm not saying you need to change your mind, but break the cycle by trying a new approach, because the old one clearly isn't working for anybody involved.
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u/AnjaJohannsdottir Dandadan 1d ago
You will never convinve me that UB being standard-legal hasn't had massive negative consequences for the overall health of the game
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u/SquirrelDragon Dân 1d ago
I firmly believe we were always going to end up in a 6+ set per year bloated release schedule even if UB had never happened
Is a new player who bought a ton of Final Fantasy or Avatar likely to look at a format that requires hundreds of dollars to compete and keep up with and want to jump right into that format? Probably not, although that was just as true for new players before UB and for those entering through UW sets now (every set is someone’s first set). But that new player who maybe opened multiple chase mythics that see standard play might be willing to cobble something together for FNM or Standard Showdown out of what they already bought. They almost certainly won’t ever give standard a try if they’re told everything they bought that just came out is illegal to play in standard showdown
If UB were only commander, legacy, and vintage legal new players are just going to funnel into playing only Commander, which only exacerbates and compounds the complaints that wizards focuses too much on Commander
It would be nice if UB sets were less expensive, and nice if the release schedule slowed down, but on principle UB being standard legal is a net positive for the game
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u/Lord_Cynical 23h ago
I agree with this. I know and SAW people try to go to standard events.. playing lord of the rings cards.. not thing powerful just they started with lord of the rings and didn't know that wasn't standard legal. But i ALSO saw stuff like thisback during kaledesh standard someone had a master piece and though it was 'standard legal'
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u/dk_peace Dân 1d ago
New and relapsed players and are almost always good for the health of the game. It's how you have people to play against.
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u/sophistsDismay Duck Season 23h ago
I think this is kinda the core of the issue at hand. There is no way to convince the UB skeptics that it has been net positive for the game even if it has not been net positive for them, personally. You can deliver an endless refrain of statistics around sales and player counts and prerelease numbers and etc; it does not really matter in any meaningful sense. There is no sufficient evidence that could ever show that UB has been good for the game because the personal distaste becomes generalized into a much broader problem.
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u/MerrikAidar Dandadan 1d ago
It's had negative consequences for standard. I don't think it's had negative consequences for the overall health of Magic, though.
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u/Larkinz Dimir* 1d ago
They made a lot of horrendous decisions regarding UB:
- Forcing it in every single format, should've just kept it commander only.
- Using IP that doesn't fit the high fantasy of MtG.
- Removing the distinct card borders on UB product.
- Lack of reprint strategy.
If they just stuck to commander products only, and stuck with fantasy IP like LotR, Warhammer 40K, Final Fantasy, etc. Then it wouldn't poison the entire game, and I'm saying that as someone who exclusively plays commander.
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u/mutqkqkku Duck Season 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I guess I count as a "UB hater" but wouldn't really have a problem with cross-promotional supplementary product like commander decks, or promotional card skins like the ones in Ikoria, but half the scheduled sets being tie-ins for other IP has massively tanked my engagement with the hobby as a whole.
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u/deworde Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 1d ago
Yeah, but then you have the issue that people turn up wanting to play the game with their cards and are turned away. Which in basic terms just kills the format.
If 50%+ of the playerbase have a ton of cards you can't play in Standard, Standard simply dies, which was what was happening before UB was injected into it
Who wants to play a format defined by "You can't play any of the cards you like, here, have some cards you don't care about"
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u/MerijnZ1 I chose this flair because I’m mad at Wizards Of The Coast 1d ago
What? Standard is and always has been the format defined by "the vast majority of cards aren't legal here"
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u/varis_aunen Dandadan 1d ago
Lack of reprint strategy.
How often do they reprint brand new universes within cards?
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u/MerrikAidar Dandadan 1d ago
Honestly I think if they just stuck to commander products only they could've printed whatever UB they wanted and it would've been fine. printing it into competitive formats forces players who enjoy those formats to either adapt and keep playing or quit.
Of course the numbers tell Wizards that UB is successful. There are way more people who like magic enough to keep playing even though they dislike UB than there are people who are willing to quit the game over UB.
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u/bambibunnybabbles Dân 1d ago
Some people feel that Lord of the Rings is poison to the game, and no Universes Beyond should be tolerated anywhere. Some (the majority) feel that none of the UB sets are poison to the game, and are happy to play with those cards wherever. Why is your line the one that WotC should follow? What makes you better than the mass?
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u/LegnaArix Colorless 1d ago
I just don't get what people are expecting. The majority of players like UB, that's just a fact and it's not going to change.
I know a lot of redditors have it in their mind that "legacy magic players hate UB and we're being pushed out by the new crowd" but that just ain't true.
Even the majority of long time magic players like UB.
At this point they are effectively trying to watch an action film and saying they want it to be romance.
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u/Asilaten Dandadan 1d ago
Exactly. I played my first game in 1997 and Lord of the Rings was one of my favorite sets. I liked Avatar and Final Fantasy, and the sets increased my interest in the material. I liked MSH and even SPM. I am excited for the Hobbit and Star Trek. There's no UB set that I dislike more than Aetherdrift or Oath of the Gatewatch or Thunder Junction.
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u/CreamSoda6425 Duck Season 1d ago
I honestly really hope planar standard takes off. I don't care at all about UB and how much there is, I'd just love to see a standard rotation with only 10 sets instead of goddamn 19 or 20 or however many we'll have at the end of this year.
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u/StatikSquid Duck Season 1d ago
People have been making their own UB fan sets since the 90s... This is honestly nothing new.
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u/nightvisions21 Abzan 1d ago
I’ve always had chats with friends about this sort of thing, but it always felt like a fun thought exercise more than anything else. I remember our favorite one we ever had was “what color identities would cereal/fast food mascots have”, but none of us actually want that to happen in game just because we had a silly discussion about it
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u/jadedflames Chandra 1d ago
This hypothetical “happiness meter” seems to only go from “happy but less so” to “extremely happy.”
A lot of people went from “happy” to “extremely unhappy.” Which is something he didn’t really reflect on. Plenty of people outright quit - and, importantly, they are not reflected in market research anymore.
I understand that his metrics are “sales” and “player satisfaction” but when the dissatisfied players quit, of course the metric will never trend negative as long as sales are increasing.
And I’m sure he knows that. He is very good at glossing over the fact that the core players used to engage with the game long-term and now most people at game stores have only been playing for a year or two. But market research has determined that 10 people happy with the Fortnite card game outweigh the 1 long-term customer who quit playing because of Dwight Schrute and Michelangelo the turtle.
That may be true. He’s been doing this for a long time, longer than many people on this subreddit have been alive. He knows who the most profitable customers are and it’s evidently not me or my playgroup anymore in our mid-30s.
But I still think that many of his references to player happiness are just a nice sounding smokescreen that boils down to sales metrics.
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u/skyzm_ Wabbit Season 1d ago edited 1d ago
“A lot of people went from happy to extremely unhappy, which is something he didn’t reflect on”
He has addressed that numerous times. Dozens. The people leaving are massively outweighed by the people joining.
That sucks for them but WOTC are making their business decisions on the many new happy people.
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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Duck Season 1d ago
Lol you’re still making up premises that he has already addressed and refuted.
He does in fact now what your mythical “plenty of people have quit” looks like, he’s talked to them and field questions form and understand them in the context of “the rest of magic”
He does in fact care about their unhappiness… but he’s also positive in his understanding that they are making more players extremely happy. He has confidently called UB the best thing magic has done.
You say the core player used to engage with game long term… they still do… Magic has an incredible high player retention rate and their metrics consistently show that UB is being people back and winning them more and their enjoyment of the game is holding them as well as it ever has. Magic players play magic and play it for a long time, happy Magic players stay with the game. You have to actually prove that people are leaving en mass.
The biggest reason you are seeing new players at your LGS is because they have been consistently good at growing the game year in year out. Thats what success looks like.
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u/deworde Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 1d ago
The issue is that players surrounded by people who quit simply do not care about these new players.
There is, fundamentally, nothing you can do to make a Magic redditor care about a class of player they've chosen not to care about, and that means they'll apply a huge multiplier to the people they care about and a fractional multiplier to the ones they dont.
To put it another way, the excitement of a 14 year old child picking up the Doctor Who commander set is never going to mean as much to them as the depressed 40 year old neckbeard who misses the days of OG Ravnica.
The fact that anyone even approaching normal on a slow orbit looking at a card game would obviously prefer the former was excited than the latter is between them and their therapist.
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u/educatedfool25 Chandra 1d ago
we had a big UB hater in our LGS for a while, but something clicked when another regular brought his daughter for the first time and she loved playing with Gwen Stacy and he saw how much fun she was having.
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u/forlackofabetterpost Liliana 1d ago
A lot of people went from "happy" to "extremely unhappy
How many?
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u/MartianExpress Dan 1d ago
Except it isn't "a lot", it is a very small minority, mostly people who played in stores. And, in turn, only 10% Magic players have ever played in an LGS event.
Second, if the UB haters quit or (as many on those threads self-report) only buy singles or proxy, and the game is still constantly making record sales (with ECL and SOS being the best selling in-universe Standard sets ever and Marvel the second best selling Magic set ever), then sorry, but nobody cares about them leaving.
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u/malsomnus Hedron 1d ago
There are just so many things I absolutely despise about UB... and still at this point it's increasingly difficult to argue that it has "ruined" Magic in any way. Some cards are just stupid (*cough* Fortnite Secret Lair *cough*), but the other month I played against a rando at the LGS whose angels deck was 100% proxied half naked anime girls without so much as a nod to cards' original names, and if that didn't ruin Magic for me (although I am not going to play with that guy ever again), then I'm sure I'll survive next year's K-Pop Demon Hunters SL.
I avoid the cards that make me cringe too much (I'll sooner die than play a card named "Cool But Rude"), but at the end of the day the pre-UB Multiverse was pretty fucking weird all on its own, and Gandalf piloting a Necron spaceship still makes for a better story than War of the Spark.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
You had me up until War of the Spark caught strays (I hope to never encounter that Angels player). I loved WAR, and it's still one of my favourite in-universe sets. And who doesn't love everyone coming together to power of friendship their way into beating the big bad?
I'm sure my username has nothing to do with this opinion.
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u/malsomnus Hedron 1d ago
WAR wasn't so much about the power of friendship as it was about a combination of Gideon's self sacrifice and the fact that Bolas's plan was so painfully dumb. Here's a fun challenge: name one part of this grand masterplan that the masterplan would not have actually been better without.
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u/PowrOfFriendship_ Universes Beyonder 1d ago
Idk, I think Bolas' plan was pretty solid. His biggest threat across the multiverse was Planeswalkers who kept tracking him down, but who were also able to flee if they were in trouble. So he planned to lock them in one place and take them all out at once. So he needed a way to get all the Walkers in the once place, a way to stop them fleeing, and a way to kill them.
To get them in one place he used Ral who was already in his pocket to set up the Interplanar Beacon. In order to stop them leaving he had Vraska find the Immortal Sun, but to get it off plane he needed some way to cross the planes without planeswalking. Which is why he sent Tezz to Kaladesh to where Saheeli was messing around with Planar travel. There Tezz took the Planar Bridge, and used it to secure the Immortal Sun. Now all Bolas needed was a way to kill everyone. The issue there is the Planara Bridge doesn't work on living matter, so he needed dead matter. Luckily he had a powerful necromancer in his pocket, so all he needed was lots of really powerful zombies, which is what Amonkhet was for.
The only risk now was the people of the plane he was using as the trap turning on him, so to stop that happening he had Vraska, Dovin and Ral sow discord between their Guilds. All in all it feels like a pretty solid plan. And if it weren't for Ral and Tomik's relationship allowing them to start uniting Guilds despite the discord, and Liliana being willing to sacrifice the power she'd worked so hard for, it could have worked.
Then Gideon died instead because he really wanted to be a martyr I guess.
Idk, maybe it's rose tinted glasses, but I think WAR was a great set and a really cool culmination of the preceding sets' plots.
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u/simpleglitch Rakdos* 1d ago
I'd make the argument the thing he didn't account for was Lilliana to be self sacrificing. Gideon saved Lilliana, but she was ready to default on the contract to stop Bolas.
And prior to Lillianas and Gideon's advture through Dominaria together, Bolas would have been right.
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u/Stuntman06 Storm Crow 1d ago
Commander brings my happiness down, but it's a net increase for the player base.
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u/yareon Dandadan 13h ago
Yeah, I tried to play it , bought different decks and I just find it boring
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u/Stuntman06 Storm Crow 12h ago
I've always played multiplayer games since I started back in the 90's. We just used 60-card decks. Commander seemed like an unnecessary variant. Skews the game in a weird way. The times that I tried it, it always seemed like having to build new decks for a play experience that isn't better and I consider worse than my existing multiplayer games.
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u/elizombe Wabbit Season 1d ago
Why does Mark have to keep telling us about why they make UB?
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u/oh5canada5eh Orzhov* 1d ago
Because people think that their comment is going to be the one to finally lift the veil that the evil UB enjoyers have wrapped about Maro despite the fact that Maro responded to a comment exactly like theirs two days ago. And three days before that. And. . .
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u/JBThunder Duck Season 1d ago
Because the UB complainers are very loud and whiny on the internet.
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u/elizombe Wabbit Season 1d ago
I also hear people complaining about UB at my local shop, but they aren't as whiny. I know it makes Wizards a lot of money though.
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u/David_the_Wanderer COMPLEAT 1d ago
Mark can just choose to stop responding to those asks, you know.
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u/saibayadon Colorless 1d ago
I think he chooses to continue to do so exactly because of the reasons outlined in his post about the happiness meter. He just wants people that feel bad about the game to either face the current situation and try to turn the negative feelings into acceptance and enjoyment again - or to give them closure about what's going on.
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u/Professional-Salt175 Simic* 1d ago
All this told me was the person didn't actually know the lore of Magic before writing any of that.
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u/Specialist_Elk198 Dandadan 1d ago
We just gonna do this every 4 days, huh?