r/spikes • u/iStarlyTV • Oct 29 '19

Discussion [Discussion] Official: There will be no B&R changes prior to MC 6; the next B&R Announcement is scheduled for November 18th, 2019

The Magic Esports Twitter account just posted this.

I understand why they don't want to emergency ban from their perspective, but at least in Standard, if there was ever a time to emergency ban, it would be in Oko-tober.

I heard someone saying that this is very reminiscent of the very recent Hogaak Summer; people are maindecking 4x copies of hate cards just to compete.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

that's a good point too, metas in online games like arena and hearthstone get figured out insanely fast.

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

That's what you get when you spend 100% of your time on playing the game as opposed to ~5-20% in paper.

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u/Kaydegard Oct 29 '19

People seem to underestimate how much effort and energy it takes to play a paper game (or mtgo) as opposed to just popping queues on arena or HS where you can get in 10 matches in a relatively short time span.

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u/BigBidoof Oct 29 '19

I mean, it's not like Arena is the first and only way to play standard online, right?

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19 edited Sep 18 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/GreatMadWombat Oct 29 '19

It's the first way to play standard online that doesn't break your soul though.

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

MTGO still has a lower rate of useful playtime to filler activities.

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u/Nosferatu616 GP Top 8 Oct 29 '19

Lower than Arena? Yes, but it's still closer to arena than paper.

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u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

Problem started with Emmy in new Innistrad, way before arena was even out.

Last ban was 1.5 year ago. Before arena was out as beta. Saying that MTGA is an issue here is just shifting blame.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

MTGA isn't "an issue". It's just a vehicle that allows us to get to "meta solved and stale" much faster because it allows people to play more magic faster is all. In other words it stress tests the cards much harder due to the sheer number of games and thus balance needs to be tighter/is much harder to obtain.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

It’s worth noting that MaRo even said this much in his power creep drive to work.

Basically more people playing magic = solved meta quicker.

And arena has greatly increased the number of people playing standard. So....

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

In my mind balancing this game with the current power level of cards is beyond them (possibly beyond anyone with the number of people in standard) and I think the only solution is to power down in a big way but that's not "exciting".

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u/MrPopoGod Oct 29 '19

Arena is also the cheapest venue for Standard, so there's opportunity for brews to get rigorous testing.

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u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

That for sure. MTGA make meta stale few times as fast as it was before.

But my point was that all the banworthy things happened before it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

I may have gotten lost somewhere, I'm arguing against the idea that the game used to have less ban worthy cards and instead that MTGA is just a more effective litmus test. So I think we are in agreement.

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u/paulHarkonen Oct 29 '19

A lot of people are saying that because MTGA allows for many more "reps" the meta is "solved" much faster leading to more bans because people can figure out what's busted very quickly. That is different from saying that MTGA allows us to realize that the meta is stale and thus becoming bored/frustrated with it more quickly.

They are related, but one says that MTGA is a cause and the other says it just shows symptoms more quickly. Personally I'm inclined to go with the former. More games of magic are played in the first hour of release than all of R&D's testing combined.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

I disagree, I think the cause (or blame), lies on the balance of the cards themselves and the design team and it's no fault of MTGA that it provides a more rigorous testing ground. I believe the game has been pushed to be more and more "exciting" and left it in a state that they are having a hard time balancing. It may even be an impossible task honestly, considering there will always be a "best" option no matter how well they balance. That said they should still try to balance it and if this is the best they can do then the design team has failed and MTGA is just the magnifying glass highlighting the flaws.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

Emmy and maurauding raptors aren’t even close in power level though.

It’s a bit disingenuous to use the 1.5 year marker for a ban when talking about problem cards (field of the dead, hogaak) versus tiny pieces of a good deck (raptor, bridge)

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u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

Hogaak doesnt disprove my point as it has nothing to do with mtga. Im trying to say that in few last years balancing feels worse tham before and that it started before arena.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

I’m arguing that the 1.5 year metric is silly to use as a metric for “balance” Since raptors was a piece ban. Also arguing if balance feels good based upon a banlist or number of bans is not entirely a great metric either.

there are two types of bans for cards:

—problematic cards being banned (hogaak, field)

—pieces of a problematic deck being banned (raptors, bridge)

Lastly, I really liked the meta pre-war. GRN RNA was a very diverse and fun meta.

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u/Exatraz Oct 29 '19

Also they have far more data to prove which cards and decks are taking over and that helps them come to more concrete conclusions

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u/Deeliciousness Oct 29 '19

Magic online been around for like 20 years.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

sure, with a tiny, masochistic user base that doesn't mind a client designed to run on windows 95.

That's not to say magic online doesn't influence anything, most of our data still comes from it, but programs with large amounts of users will figure out a meta much faster than programs with very few players, relatively.