This post is meant to help me (and you, be welcome) vent some frustration, as well as help this community grow.
To make it interesting, try to explain at least a little bit why something bothers you.
- Noisy pets. I hate them.
I'm talking about the cackling goblin, the obnoxious horses, the dumb dogs, the intrusive mice and whatever repeatedly makes any sound.
I mean, it's a fun addition at first, but it gets old quickly. And whenever Someone gets some damage, or something else of minor importance happens, it gets commented by not more than 3 (?) sound reactions. I think I heard all of them a few thousand times by now. It's just annoying.
Sadly, the only way to mute them for good is to mute all opponent's text and image emotes, basically shutting off communication. Which has it's own merit, but it's a different thing. Why combine both in one control?
So sometimes I cruise on everything off to have more peace of mind. When I feel more open, I enable reactions again, but manually mute every opponent who has a pet which cannot behave. Sorry bros. If you want to be heard, make this useless thing shut up.
- Decks which require you to react on dozens of triggers per round. Like 0-cost artifact spam, lifegain frenzy, foodcat sacrificers.
It's just so tedious. And some people seem to do it just for the fun of it, without any impact on the game.
Like when the Scurry Oak starts growing, I have a Ritual of Soot in Hand, but still want to use my remaining mana in their end step. I may have to click through hundreds of triggers just to wipe it all away whenever they feel they spammed enough.
- One trick shows.
Talking about Dualcaster Mage, Minion of the Mighty, some decks around Colossal Hammer. I mean, it's nice you can make these decks which can kill you on round 2 or so (but fall apart instantly when they don't), just in principle. But in common play, it's just a boring waste of time. I know these decks exist, cool. I'm pretty sure you just copied it from someone else or the internet, wow. Okay, you won and the only thing good about it is that I don't have to shuffle physical cards afterwards. Now get lost.
- Fast decks in general.
I'm aware they are necessary to keep the lategame horrors in check, but meh. Why do I put 60 cards together if I only get to see 10, and to play 2?
To me, it smells like bad game design that some strategies revolve around making your opponent unable to play (also looking at discard, counter and other locks). Again, in principle it is amazing that MTG has this flexibility and variety. But does it make for interesting and fun matches for both sides? I much prefer games which have some back and forth, not one steamrolling the other.
- Uncreative decks.
Such wow, 4 copies of each elf/goblin/whatever, which everyone else plays too. Generic UR wizards, or Boros cats with Goblin Bombardment. Seen them a hundred times, mostly losing to them. I guess there's the crux; they are so strong you can hardly play anything else. Which ironically makes the aforementioned flexibility and variety of this originally amazing game self defeating, resulting in stale repetition.
- Overpowered / too cheap cards
Did the reanimators really need an upgrade in the form of a 2-mana Persist? Or lifegain the Ocelot Pride? Both were already strong and popular before these were added. I also consider Sheoldred's Edict one such culprit. Just a few years ago, I (and many others) were playing Fleshbag Marauder, a creature which has "on enter: each player sacrifices a creature" or something. Now it's a 2-mana instant with more flexibility and precision. I think it just leads to a race to the bottom, where games are decided by whoever drew their winning solution first (we give you 3 turns to make that happen). Again, I very much like that something like this is possible, but it should not be so common that it displaces other strategies, which could make for more interesting and more fun games, for both sides.
This got longer than I anticipated. Feel free to add your own thoughts independent from mine, or cheese to my whine.
I pretty much agree with all of your points, but wanted to add a few more that have gone into me taking a long Arena break:
One of the greatest aspects of the game pre-Arena was that there were literally thousands of cheap cards (cheap rares/mythics) to make playing off-meta or fun decks affordable. Some are even quite competitive, yet in Arena the cost for every rare and mythic normalizes around the same price. Roughly $6/rare if you buy gems for packs, or about $2.50/rare if you buy rare wildcards directly. However, there is a cap on the direct buy WCs.
Having ALL rares equalized in a rather high price forces everyone to spend their WCs on only the highest performing rares and mythics. If you only have $20 for Arena, you're not going to spend it all on 4 jank rares for a pet deck, you're going to use them on the top tier rares in the tier 1 decks.
I believe this has unbelievable consequences in game play all the way to player mental health, and after a while I was looking at just how much I was spending to stay current in Arena and I was sickened by it. Not even kidding here -- I never had more than a few hours a week to play, so I was putting in about $200/set! I stopped in January 2024 and haven't returned but at this point I think it's essentially impossible for the economy to change.
This is not Arena-specific, but all of the formats available on Arena right now are inundated with play patterns that I don't find enjoyable. Starting with Timeless, because it's the most powerful format, I don't even watch gameplay on Twitch or Youtube anymore because it's not interesting. That is a huge problem I think, because it doesn't look fun to play. You have horrible play patterns like the boros energy cards, Grief+Reanimate, all of the silly Alchemy cards like Juggernaut Peddler, and when you combine everything the game is literally decided on turn 2. That is not fun at all, in fact that feels like the opposite of fun to me. I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game. We don't have that right now.
With Standard, often Standard players say the format is healthy or "healthier than it's ever been" and I contest that with it's flat out not fun to play and not fun to watch. That's my experience. Look at the # of Twitch streamers. Look at CovertGoBlue quitting the game because he found Standard to be too unenjoyable. These are the real effects of what WoTC is doing to the format -- making it faster and more powerful, more pushed rares and mythics, and way less deck design thought. The fact that Sheoldred is still in standard makes me sick.
I have been getting into Pioneer lately because I think it's perhaps the only interesting format left to play, and with that I may get into Explorer but I really wish the card pool was equal to Pioneer. I think that's a huge mistake they're making in slow-rolling the card releases.
If anyone can give me one reason why Nadu isn't banned in Brawl I'll concede, but the fact that it hasn't been banned (as well as Rusko and Baral imo) tells us everything we need to know about Brawl: WoTC. doesn't. give. a. shit. They don't care at all, and the lack of not only meaningful but ANY updates at all to queuing or banlist is enough of a reason to hard avoid it all together.
This is a format where players just auto-concede to certain commanders that they don't want to play. Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.
I could go on but this has gotten long already. I appreciate the post because some of this stuff I have been thinking about for a long time.
Aw, that sounds horrible! I had no idea, I don't spend any money on this. WotC got enough from me back when I bought paper cards, and somehow I got along fine in Arena without money.
But I remember having a similar problem when we still played with paper cards. You're forced to keep spending to keep playing with your friends, or drop out at some point. For inhouse paper, at least we could "print" proxies.
Would be nice if they considered how much each player has spent on their current deck for the matchmaking. Like high spenders have to face other high spenders, and budget players are grouped with themselves.
Though of course, in both cases, the economic incentive for WotC is to create unfair situations.
I don't know what words like Timeless, Standard or Pioneer mean, but yeah, seems we feel the same. Especially this sounds exactly like me: I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game.
Take Glissa Sunslayer for example, a black/green creature for 3 mana with first strike and death touch (which alone makes it one of the best blockers imo), it has 3 additional abilities from which you can choose one on impact. Like, what, why? This would be totally playable without these extra abilities. FS DT in itself is an extremely powerful combo, and I think there is currently no other card which has that out of the box. It can even create nasty combos by repeatedly resetting Sagas. Binding of the old Gods for example, destroy one permanent each round for the sole cost of dealing player damage. Though strangely, I don't see it being played too often, so it seems to be fine.
I think the game would be more fun if the overall power level would be toned down a bit, but don't expect that to happen.
Fun fact, I just conceded to a Peddler before my 2nd turn. I tried my luck a dozen times or so against that deck, which rarely succeeded and was never enjoyable. Yeah, skip.
Yes, Nadu is shameless. Though it has little impact on my matches, I rarely see it. I suffer much more from Persist Reanimators, and Goblin Bombardment with Ajani. Or this silly deck which mills itself, with creatures automagically returning to the battlefield.
Baral ... can lead to hopeless situations, agreed. But I see Baral even less than Nadu. Could it be that counter decks came out of fashion, because aggro got too fast? Many players seem to play almost exclusively cards for 1 or max 2 mana.
Like I just lost after my first round to a Fireblade Charger with Sigarda's Aid and a Colossus Hammer. Arena asked me afterwards wether I had fun. Mhm. Next match: Scholar of the Lost Trove gets Persist in round 3. Cool. After that: Elves swinging lethal in round 3.
Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker? Admittedly, I've been playing 2 or 3 Ruskos for a year or more. Before, I liked using Underrealm Lich with this frog monster which lets you draw a card whenever a land is put into your graveyard. I like recycling decks and fear Ashiok, guess I'm loss averse.
Well put, I agree. I heard something when learning about game design: A mechanic, which gives something in your game a new ability, should be fun for the player using it, and for the players trying to counter it. Like maybe your warrior can raise his shield to block attacks, bot others have their abilities to penetrate shields, hit your feet or whatever. We should not just make the warrior invulnerable, with no counterplay possible. It might be fun for one player, but you want both to enjoy your game.
I'm only referring to Rusko in 1v1 Brawl. I think Rusko is a cool card and must do pretty well in Historic but it's definitely easier to play against in Historic. In Brawl its oppressive because it's a guaranteed Midnight Clock on turn 3 or 4 that comes in untapped, and it has a decent wincon built into it. I think it should create the clock on cast only. A 3/3 that ramps, draws cards, and drains life all in one and pretty much removes his commander tax with the clock tokens, that is way too far. Hopefully by now the matchmaker puts Rusko in the hell queue.