Edit: Prefacing these complaints with how much I like the latest patch and the new expansion, so much awesome! Diamond changes are great, cards are great, clean ups are great, everything is great right now, just nervous about the year to come and some unaddressed issues.
This is basically everything I had feared, everything I stood against appears to be happening, and none of the things I really had hoped would be addressed will be.
So yea…this is pretty final and pretty disastrous.
Card Changes
Bloodrage Mask - Agree, but gates/mantra are the biggest problems in the game, and to a lesser extent Zendo.
Spectral Revenant - Phantasm was the problem not Rev, and it did get hit, this would have been fine if all the factions staple powerhouses also got hit, but without hitting the others this is not ok.
Chromatic Cold and Frosburn- STOP THAT Vanar is supposed to be the control faction, deal with the actual problems like luminous charge and flawless. Fox aspect doesn’t even see much play anymore thanks to shimzar/thunder. Vanar has problems, their control kit is not the issue. Going after their staples weakens their more fun approaches without making the problematic ones healthier.
Saberspine Tiger - Probably for the best.
Mechs: Probably for the best.
I love my magmar, but Ragnora is feeling a bit strong already, and is only going to get better with the xpac. Also no RNG adressing, cough gambler cough.
Edit: You want to make rotations unranked for new players? That’s fine. Just don’t mess with our main ladder. In fact that would be a great way to implement a casual mode, as vets would prefer the eternal, and cant use the casual mode as a stomping ground to test their eternal decks. Or at the very least make sure we have a ranked eternal format that receives balance patches alongside the rotating format.
Clean up is good, but rotations counteract any good this may have done.
We were so close to a perfectly balanced and diverse meta, but looks like they are just going to give up on it and go for rotations, on top of attacking faction staples instead of problematic archetypes. Although let me preface my complaint with the fact that CPGs rotation model is the best that I have seen.
Set rotations: Now we are going to get crippled archetypes, a stale meta, and entire investments will become a giant waste of money, and then your forced to buy the new things to compete...."
No! God no, please no. Rotating formats are the worst, and a huge money grubbing scam.
Power creep is also not a good method, and it does not necessarily have to happen, especially with a digital game where they can adjust both old and new things at their leisure. Releasing new cards, balancing over turned things, buffing older cards, and supporting various archetypes prevents things from getting stale.
Not to mention it divides the player base between formats. Gauntlet is enough of an alternate game mode, although it really ought to be free, but harder to get rewards out of.
A rotated format is not any friendlier to a new player, the costs are usually the same to make a compeitive deck, they have to do just as much learning, and the meta Is super stale for a couple months due to the tiny card pool. And then guess what, time to throw away all your old stuff and buy everything new! To prepare for yet another boring stale couple months, and then it repeats again.
Has anyone ever actually been scared away by a large card pool? I see big pool and think lots of customization, I can do what I want and not be all cookie cutter, and am thrilled with the constant discovery. Most of the learning is mechanics and basic tactics which have little to do with the card pool. I see people say “oh it is friendly to new players” but never have I actualy seen a new player complain.
There is a reason why Modern and EDH in MTG are quickly becoming more popular than standard, despite that Wizards goes out of their way promote Standard. And unlike Legacy/vintage because edh/modern gets the balancing attention they need, they have been very successful, and that balancing is much easier for a digital game to.
Than there is another issue, it took several expansions for all of the various archetypes to get proper support, and even then many don’t (hence the new generals). With so many generals and archetypes out there, unless they release cards that flesh out the holes in the archetypes then they will be crippled. For example, if Vet ever loses Blood of Air they are going to be in for a bad time.
I liked the small sets, but I can understand why people disliked them. Seems extreme, I wish you could craft the cards, but not disenchant them, but still have the ability to buy the cost efficient route. But this is ultimately fine.
Edit: New expansion is pretty cool, some factions certainly made off better then others. But dear god not only did mantra/gates not get addressed they added a lot of support to it.
I will probably add more as it comes to me, currently in shock and panicking. I hate to be that guy, I love the game, and have absolutely loved most of their latest directions and changes.
