Poll: Most balanced mpq version

Morphis

This poll is to see at which stage you felt the game was more balanced.
That means each option includes all the previous sets.

I know balanced meaning it's a subjective matter but i think it does not require explanation.

Just vote.

buscemi

Your poll is missing an option.

Morphis

buscemi wrote:

Your poll is missing an option.

Is this ironic as in "the game was never balanced is missing"?
Cause set wise I included all the 5 released so far.

bk1234

Morphis wrote:

buscemi wrote:

Your poll is missing an option.

Is this ironic as in "the game was never balanced is missing"?
Cause set wise I included all the 5 released so far.

I was looking for just that option actually.

Ohboy

Very few data points so far, but soi is currently leading the field in a 2 to 1 lead.

The same set with the most talked/complained about OP card.

I'm interested to see if it holds that lead.

buscemi

Balance in Origins just depended on which cards/planeswalkers were being buffed or nerfed on any given week.

BFZ wasn't at all balanced, Kiora sat at the top of the tree and killed everyone, while everyone who owned Kiora tried to pretend she was balanced because they'd spent a lot of money on her; No-one believed them. Ob was also ungodly powerful in the hands of a player, but not as the AI, so we all kept quiet about him in the hopes that he wouldn't get nerfed. It's worked do far.

I don't have much recollection of OGW being much different to BFZ... there was some debate over whether Crush of Tentacles as a balanced card. Debate! Jesus. Come to think of it, that might have been the exact moment that the light in my soul was extinguished.

SOI was more 'balanced' in the sense that there was a wider variery of completely broken decks you could always win with than there were in BFZ. BTB and Harness the Storm in particular allowed back and red decks like Ajani and Sarkhan to be completely unbeatable.

EMN has Deploy the Gatewatch. Nuff said.

Tilikum

Remember the Runaway Carage epidemic? Gewwwww.

sunprincess

The Carriage epidemic was the developer's way of encouraging people to make more defensive and varried decks. I think it changed the meta significantly, and got people exploring more options, to their credit.

However, it should NOT have overlapped with the Saheeli Rai's Challenge event, especially since they gave her next to no answers to it. I say that despite being someone who won her, the 2nd time around.

While Shadows Over Innistrad had a lot of cards that made for degenerate combos (Seasons Past Loop, Harness the Storm at 6 mana), it did finally proliferate good removal over the majority of sets. Only green, and some blue decks (with many other mythics) could really depend on Scour, and at that point, only white and black had decent hard removal. Anguished Unmaking is also a very good card, which makes blue the only colour without support removal - this is mitigated by multicolour walkers, and the fact that blue can arguably run it's own support shenanigans to the best degree in the game.

After all of the nerfs on Shadows cards hit (especially the ones to Carriage and Seasons), it was possible to play good decks in the largest number of walker colours, which could all deal with a variety of threats, which imo, brought the largest balance. I would say the largest arguments against this would be the fact that Olivia had just been released prior to the 1.7 update that brought the much needed nerfs, but hey, I went until last week until I pulled her, and have been able to get by just fine.

Some decks at the time were already becoming more explosive because of her, for sure, but the buff to Gaia's revenge was already present, and Desolation Twins has always been a pain, but far fewer people have them due to the popularity of buying Olivia (at least for people in the Platinum Bracket) - explosive decks are not new, but imo, Eldritch Moon has pushed them even further, with a few chase cards that are all the more viable too, due to deploy, and I think that has reduced balance.

At any rate, that's just my opinion, as a free to play player in platinum, with all the walkers at 60, who has been playing since moderately early in origins!

For new players, I think every new set that was released before a player came makes the game more inaccessible and more difficult. I know that event tiers help newer players, but that doesn't matter outside of events, and even in events, and I imagine there are still going to be Bronze tier players who have some of the newer mythic exclusives, for example, which usually demand answers pretty immediately! But then again, new players wouldn't really be able to tell you when in the past things were most balanced!

madwren

The game's at its most balanced state now in terms of planeswalkers relative to one another. You can win with overpowered cards in any color combination, though some of the Origins planeswalkers suffer due to lower mana gains than the newer ones. That's the positive effect of power creep, I suppose.

Still, I prefer the current meta to the days when it was Kiora-or-bust.

wereotter

These new emerge eldrazi have thrown balance, from a color balance perspective at least, out the window. giving black/blue the ability to destroy supports with Mockery of Nature, or giving red the ability to bounce creatures with Lashweed Lurker, and green/white spell recursion with Vexing Scuttler has made the color you play irrelevant. I'm getting really tired of Koth decks bouncing all my creatures by casting Lashweed Lurker every other turn while ramping like crazy since the AI just spams his first ability (like it does with every planeswalker)

buscemi

madwren wrote:

The game's at its most balanced state now in terms of planeswalkers relative to one another. You can win with overpowered cards in any color combination, though some of the Origins planeswalkers suffer due to lower mana gains than the newer ones. That's the positive effect of power creep, I suppose.

Still, I prefer the current meta to the days when it was Kiora-or-bust.

That's very true, what we have now is better than then, but we're still having to deal with 72 way ties for first place in events. Overpowered is not the right level for all the best cards to be balanced at.

buscemi

Tilikum wrote:

Remember the Runaway Carage epidemic? Gewwwww.

Personally, I didn't mind RC. At Platinum Tier, most of us had the right cards to deal with it, and it caused a pleasing shift in the metagame. However, it did seem to cause massive problems to people without such large collections who didn't have decent answers to it, so overall it should be considered a mistake.

madwren

buscemi wrote:

madwren wrote:

The game's at its most balanced state now in terms of planeswalkers relative to one another. You can win with overpowered cards in any color combination, though some of the Origins planeswalkers suffer due to lower mana gains than the newer ones. That's the positive effect of power creep, I suppose.

Still, I prefer the current meta to the days when it was Kiora-or-bust.

That's very true, what we have now is better than then, but we're still having to deal with 72 way ties for first place in events. Overpowered is not the right level for all the best cards to be balanced at.

Aye, agreed. That would be the negative effect of power creep, in that everything's a bit too much at the moment.

Mainloop25

Certain aspects of the game are more balanced than others. For example, at one point, red was one of the most powerful colors in terms of dealing with removing enemy creatures, and blue wasn't. Now blue has one of the cheapest creature removal spells in the whole game, and red has inner struggle, which works to completely remove a creature 75% of the time for twice the mana cost. It has plenty of creature damage spells, but in this day and age, you want to devote a card slot to completely remove a creature, rather than just deal damage to it.

madwren

Mainloop25 wrote:

Certain aspects of the game are more balanced than others. For example, at one point, red was one of the most powerful colors in terms of dealing with removing enemy creatures, and blue wasn't. Now blue has one of the cheapest creature removal spells in the whole game, and red has inner struggle, which works to completely remove a creature 75% of the time for twice the mana cost. It has plenty of creature damage spells, but in this day and age, you want to devote a card slot to completely remove a creature, rather than just deal damage to it.

Yeah, the problem with direct damage is that it hasn't kept up with the power creep. Same with Languish, but black at least has access to multiple blanket kill spells, so no one cares.

Still, Exquisite Firecraft, while not entirely useless (6 mana for 12 to the face during enraged is actually pretty handy), and really the cream of the crop of red's burn spells, is pretty useless against most high-end creatures.