Why bad cards exist

Ohboy

I came across this old article today. Ill let him explain why you have a chance of getting Ornithopter as your masterpiece. 

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28

speakupaskanswer

I think it's an important article but I also think it fits to MtGPQ only to some regard. Especially Ornithopter as a masterpiece doesn't fit in here at all. In paper magic you don't save up some currency to get some guaranteed masterpiece. If I get a masterpiece in paper magic, I'm happy, no matter what it is because a) it's a free bonus in my booster and b) if I don't like it I can still sell it to someone because it's a collector's item. None of that applies to MtGPQ. If you get Ornithopter as a masterpiece you just wasted 400 jewels that took you weeks or months to collect for a card you will probably never play and can not use for anything else but some runes (at least, at the moment). 

Also, I have found myself using seemingly bad cards in paper MTG because there is so much variety in the decks you can build and the formats you can play. But having only ten cards limits your choices immensely and reduces the chance of playing any bad cards very much. That's why we mostly face decks with the best cards and not some strange combo decks that surprisingly work. The singular format of the game forces you the play the most efficient, aggressive decks so that a huge percentage of the cards are never played by anyone.

Still, I agree that not every card can be good and that there are different cards for different players and different decks, but overall I think the same reasoning cannot be applied to both games, especially considering the state of MtGPQ at the moment. If they are willing to add different formats, different deck restrictions, different events, more variety overall, this might become different.

wereotter

I think one of the more important thoughts is many cards are designed with different formats and play styles in mind. Multiplayer, casual, flavor, just for fun. All these are examples of styles harder if not impossible to recreate in this game. That, unfortunately, renders more cards from the "bad card because they're not designed for the format" pile to the "legitimately bad card" pile.

Ohboy

1) all cards are free if you haven't spent money. But let's say time is money. Half the paper masterpieces aren't worth much either. You're not going to get your value back:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/MS2#online

2) you also get masterpieces as a "bonus" as you put it, from packs. Playing the elite pack game is entirely Voluntary. As can be evidenced by the many people boycotting trials. 

3) the point of the secondary objectives is to force theme decks. We've all been building theme decks. I would never consider using demolition stomper in the old nop format, or for QB. But in firf? I love playing him. I do wish they allowed real 40 card decks though. As an "advanced mode" maybe? 

4) from what I gather, the vast majority of players are casual ones. It just seems like everyone is Uber competitive because competitive people just tend to come to forums more. 

There's something else he touched on, which is that you can't hide good cards that look bad if there are no bad cards. Remember how people described Rashmi as the worst card ever? 

Just thought it was an interesting article, because it was addressing concerns as Mtg was transitioning out into a more mature game. 

Experts with better memory might chime in on this, but Mtg was very much like this when it started out. Lots of outright useless cards that could never be used because limited format wasn't invented yet. Some of the worst ones were rares(highest rarity at that time). Rainbow vales anyone? Life lace? Ancestral recall was part of a cycle that was so useless I've forgotten what the other colors did. 

speakupaskanswer

You (purposefully?) avoid most of my arguments, but I don't know why.

 I would assume that anyone who plays both paper MtG and MtGPQ can attest that it doesn't feel the same acquiring cards and getting mythics/masterpieces. Maybe that's because of the difference between physical and digital (perceived) value, maybe it's the way you get cards. If I get a worthless Masterpiece I just know it feels very different (see my reply here). You can tell me that factually there are similarities but if I as a player feel more cheated here than I do at paper MtG, it's the dev's job to make that experience more satisfying.

 On secondary objectives. Sure, some of them force me to play some cards I wouldn't play otherwise. But there are still a lot of cards I will never have to play under no circumstances. Paradoxical Outcome is a good example. In paper magic this card can serve a purpose under the right circumstances. But those circumstances, at the moment, don't exist in PQ. The deckslots might change some of that because they allow for more cards to be used.

There is another reason why the comparison fails when it comes to card design. Paper MtG in its beginnings designed bad cards because the only way to find out what worked was to print and play them. The devs of PQ can look at the years of experience from paper MtG. They don't have to design everything from scratch. But instead of following the examples they make basic design mistakes that Paper MtG solved over many years (just one example: realizing how important terminology is so nonsense about draw/summon/fetch, etc. should be obviously confusing).

 In the beginning you said you post this article to explain why we get Ornithopter as a masterpiece. The article doesn't help there. Now you say you posted it because it shows that games can grow. Again, the comparison is very misleading. Bad cards need to exist, in both games, I completely agree. But you have to see that it's not the same experience for players and not the same learning curve for the designers.

THEMAGICkMAN

speakupaskanswer said:

 Paradoxical Outcome is a good example. In paper magic this card can serve a purpose under the right circumstances. But those circumstances, at the moment, don't exist in PQ. 

Actually several people I know use it in FirF. Kari Zev's expertise however...

speakupaskanswer

Yes, that's an even better example! It's a card designed for an environment that doesn't exist.

THEMAGICkMAN

speakupaskanswer said:

Yes, that's an even better example! It's a card designed for an environment that doesn't exist.

And won't exist for years at least because its block specific. 

shteev

Ohboy said:

2) you also get masterpieces as a "bonus" as you put it, from packs. Playing the elite pack game is entirely Voluntary. As can be evidenced by the many people boycotting trials.

Opening Elite packs is voluntary. I'm not sure that 'playing the Elite pack game' is voluntary since you will have to play against cards that other players open in Elite packs. Also it's my understanding that most people boycotting the trials are doing it because not worth the time and resources they have to put into it, like me. Those players are still acquiring Mana Jewels, whose only purpose is to open Elite packs.

Ohboy said:

Experts with better memory might chime in on this, but Mtg was very much like this when it started out. Lots of outright useless cards that could never be used because limited format wasn't invented yet.

It's not acceptable that MTGPQ is making the same mistakes that MTG did 20 years ago.

Ohboy said:

Ancestral recall was part of a cycle that was so useless I've forgotten what the other colors did.

Mmm. Three of those famously useless cards were Giant Growth, Lightning Bolt, and Dark Ritual.

There's a search function on these forums, btw, and Google is also pretty easy to use.

srfin

The thing that struck me most about that article is the line:

"Please be aware that my job at Wizards (as well as all of R&D) is to create a good game and make you, our consumer, happy."

I feel like this is the biggest thing missing right now. They should be focused on making a great, fun game as #1. Once they have that making money from it should be easy.

srfin

Here's another great article by Mark: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/twenty-years-twenty-lessons-part-1-2016-05-30

Lots of those 20 lessons seem not to have been learned very well...

ifsandbuts

shteev said:

Mmm. Three of those famously useless cards were Giant Growth, Lightning Bolt, and Dark Ritual. 

  

Total garbage...

Ohboy

Ah it's really been a long while. I've honestly forgotten. Was white's healing salve?

ifsandbuts

Yes, it was healing salve.

EDHdad

No love for Healing Salve?  It's actually a pretty useful card in Limited, and was reprinted 14 times.

One problem with bad cards in this game is that there is no way to filter your collection by "just cards that are useful".   It would be better if we could designate cards as favorites or archive cards that we don't want to look at all the time.  I have over 900 cards in my collection, but I only really want to look at a few dozen when it comes to building decks.

Dsagent

In paper magic and even online magic you can buy individual cards. In this game it is pure RNG.

madwren

speakupaskanswer said:

I think it's an important article but I also think it fits to MtGPQ only to some regard. Especially Ornithopter as a masterpiece doesn't fit in here at all. In paper magic you don't save up some currency to get some guaranteed masterpiece. If I get a masterpiece in paper magic, I'm happy, no matter what it is because a) it's a free bonus in my booster and b) if I don't like it I can still sell it to someone because it's a collector's item. None of that applies to MtGPQ. If you get Ornithopter as a masterpiece you just wasted 400 jewels that took you weeks or months to collect for a card you will probably never play and can not use for anything else but some runes (at least, at the moment). 

Also, I have found myself using seemingly bad cards in paper MTG because there is so much variety in the decks you can build and the formats you can play. But having only ten cards limits your choices immensely and reduces the chance of playing any bad cards very much. That's why we mostly face decks with the best cards and not some strange combo decks that surprisingly work. The singular format of the game forces you the play the most efficient, aggressive decks so that a huge percentage of the cards are never played by anyone.

Still, I agree that not every card can be good and that there are different cards for different players and different decks, but overall I think the same reasoning cannot be applied to both games, especially considering the state of MtGPQ at the moment. If they are willing to add different formats, different deck restrictions, different events, more variety overall, this might become different.

I agree with all of this. In paper, you possess virtually unlimited chances to obtain specific cards that you want. Pick up Ornithopter in a booster? Oh well, buy Black Vise at your gaming store. 

The elite packs may be "optional", but they were designed as an endgame goal (and money sink). After saving up for literally months for a single shot, receiving an Ornithopter (essentially a glorified rare) is not only disappointing, but also de-motivates people to work towards earning these cards-- and that's not even counting the duplicate problem.

Paper magic has a robust trading scene and secondary card market.  It probably would have have survived if this wasn't the case. PQ has neither.

aenigmaeffect

Ohboy said:

I came across this old article today. Ill let him explain why you have a chance of getting Ornithopter as your masterpiece. 

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28

While it's true and important that there are "bad" cards, MaRo also talks about some of those cards find homes because of hidden gem/niche uses. There's a lot of MTGPQ cards that just don't fit the bill. 

Finally, notice that all the "bad and no niche use" cards he mentioned are common and uncommon. "Bad" rare cards are niche. And there are no "bad" mythics in paper. The point of mythics in paper MTG is to impress. There's a recent MaRo podcast (Drive to Work is the series) where he talks about how R&D expect players, when initially evaluating a card, to think of the "dream scenario", where everything goes right. When considered as such, Mythics are ALL supposed to make the players feel like this card is AMAZING. There are too many mythics and masterpieces in MTGPQ that totally fall short of that. 

MTGPQ would go a long way to try to aim for this. 

wereotter

aenigmaeffect said:

Ohboy said:

I came across this old article today. Ill let him explain why you have a chance of getting Ornithopter as your masterpiece. 

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28

While it's true and important that there are "bad" cards, MaRo also talks about some of those cards find homes because of hidden gem/niche uses. There's a lot of MTGPQ cards that just don't fit the bill. 

Finally, notice that all the "bad and no niche use" cards he mentioned are common and uncommon. "Bad" rare cards are niche. And there are no "bad" mythics in paper. The point of mythics in paper MTG is to impress. There's a recent MaRo podcast (Drive to Work is the series) where he talks about how R&D expect players, when initially evaluating a card, to think of the "dream scenario", where everything goes right. When considered as such, Mythics are ALL supposed to make the players feel like this card is AMAZING. There are too many mythics and masterpieces in MTGPQ that totally fall short of that. 

MTGPQ would go a long way to try to aim for this. 

There absolutely are "bad" or niche mythics in paper magic. The only reason he doesn't mention it is because the article is from 2002 and Magic didn't have mythic rarity until Shards of Alara set in 2008.

DuskPaladin

I agree with @speakupaskanswer. 

(Thank you Ohboy, btw for bringing this topic up. It is a really interesting one, where there’s a lot to say about. I also think the devs are trying to keep it in mind while designing cards. Personally, I think that they are wrong, because that concept can’t be applied here.)


It’s true that MTGPQ could learn a lot from MTG in certain aspects, but this is not one of those cases. 

Maro said:
When I said, “Weak cards are a fundamental part of the game,” what I was trying to say was that due to the nature of trading card games, it’s impossible not to have “bad” cards.

I put in bold the important part here. MTGPQ is NOT a trading card game.

While I think everyone can agree that Devastator of Provinces is better than Kessig Dire Swine and Verdurous Gearhulk (closer in power but still strictly worse), it would be difficult to tell which one is better between it and Olivia, both are really similar in power levels. For my Sorin deck I might value Olivia higher while another player would prefer Decimator for his Eldrazi deck (using Titan’s Presence). We could trade with each other and both be glad about the fair trade. We can’t do that here. The same would be true between Drogskol Cavalry and Akoum Hellkite. In that situation, we can agree that it’s a matter of preference.

Unfortunately, if I opened a Drogskol Cavalry and not a Akoum Hellkite, and I want one for my Sarkhan deck, I’m out of luck, I can’t trade it with anyone with both of us being happy. It’ll be worth what 500 runes? 


In the case of Ornithopter there are many reasons such comparison would be impossible to make. I can develop further on the matter in later posts.

For now, I’ll start with this, Ornithopter remains useless for 99.99% of the Magic players, even more so for the Masterpiece Ornithopter version. It’s only a 0.25$ card (for the normal version). Basically only Affinity players would want it and it’s really easy to get. Many players disagreed about Ornithopter’s Masterpiece status, and I agree with them. The concept of Ornithopter is that it’s one of most simple design in existence (it's even in the flavor text), it has no place in the Inventor’s Fair.

The Masterpiece version is for the small number of Affinity players who would like to foil their deck to the maximum. (Legacy, Modern and Commander players, for instance kinda like that.) So even if I opened one and it has no value to me, I could trade it to one of those players for something I need, like say fetch lands.

I’ll repeat, only a few players play Affinity, and only a really small number of them would like to “pimp” their deck. Many, in fact, hate foils. Most would just use the regular and much cheaper version instead.


Here in MTGPQ, Masterpieces are absolutely unlike in Paper. Masterpieces, here, are the new rarity tier after Mythic rare, while in paper, Masterpieces or foils are just a prettier and rarer version of a normal card which are easy to get and really less expensive.

If you open a Ornithopter or Lightning Greaves, you’ll just be bitter that you didn’t open a better Masterpiece, a useful one. People in real life would be upset too if they opened them without a way to trade them away, as for the great majority of them such card is absolutely useless.

I still have many points I’d like to discuss, but my post would be indigestible.

So I’d like to continue it in separate posts.

DuskPaladin

MTGPQ Masterpieces have next to nothing in common with MTG Masterpieces.


The goal of Masterpieces in paper is to give highly sought-after cards for long-time players while at the same time lower the cost of the standard format for new players. (They can open them and trade them for other cards. Many boxes will be opened by players, lowering the cost of the rares, mythics, as more will be in circulation.)

In MTGPQ, Masterpieces are supposed to be the endgame, at the very top of what the players can hope to achieve in this game,

In Paper, you have many formats with different goals for the various types of players: casual (commander, tribal, theme), competitive (limited, constructed). You can even have competitive commander players, casual limited players, etc. In short, there is an amazing number of types of players.

In PQ, even if you are a casual or competitive player, your goal is the same, to get as many cards as possible, and as good as possible. What does it mean to be a casual player in PQ? Only your frequency of playing the game will change and you may not care as much for the objectives as other players.

In paper, I can blissfully play at the kitchen table, with my Angel deck, unaware of the real competition in the world. In PQ, events and rankings are always shoved down my throat, as it wants to trigger my competitive spirit. 

It’s like the only way to play the game would be to go to the store, and play against tournament decks, while the shop owner keep shouting about the incredible rewards of finishing first and presenting the winners to the whole shop. You can try to play your casual Angel deck with a friend for a while, but you can’t ignore forever your surroundings. Some may compare Story Mode to the kitchen table far from the rest of the world, and they would be right for a while, but we have a really limited Story Mode in PQ, you can’t play it forever, and like I said they are always teasing you with the awesome prizes of outside. 

The closer we have to formats are the different events (take “closer” with a grain of salt, it’s still light years from the formats), like Fate is Really Fair, where you need to summon 5 vehicles. When you play a given format, it’s to have fun in that restricted area, like in limited you open packs, and try to build the best deck you can with those scarce resources. Unfortunately, in PQ, while you are playing your limited deck, you may very well be paired against a Vintage deck (it’s the only format where the Power 9 are allowed, it’s the highest-powered format in magic), you have a lot of chances of losing and you won’t feel like it was a fair fight. Also, the other keyword is fun, summoning 5 vehicles is the opposite of fun. 

So playing in events like Fate is really Fair is closer in analogy to playing a limited deck against a Vintage deck while getting repeatedly tazed in the Mana Jewels.

Sorry for my digression, what I wanted to say is that we don't have multiple formats in PQ where cards would be valued differently for the players. You can't build a tribal deck here and challenge your friend's theme deck for fun. You'll be facing the same opponents (in PvE and PvP), said decks are not meant for you to let your creativity flow. They are there to destroy you. You can only pursue one thing also in this game, cards and more cards.

That’s the direction that MTGPQ took, Rares are meant to be better than Uncommons, Mythic rares are better than rare, and Masterpieces should be at the pinnacle of power. Yet most are only Mythic in power, some are even worse than Uncommons as discussed in other threads. We can’t apply paper logic for the Masterpieces. It makes no sense for Masterpieces like Ornithopter and Lightning Greaves to be this underpowered.