The Death of Passion

shteev

madwren said:

babar3355 said:

I get what you are saying @madwren although I am pretty confident a 70 mph train won't catch up with an 80 mph train

Indeed, you are correct. I didn't choose that number arbitrarily, mate.  Since coalition players and whales (or a combination of the two) are always going to have an advantage of some sorts, I believe you can only NARROW the gap, not actually catch up, and slow the rate at which that advantage is accrued.

By slowing both trains down, however, the gap is not only maintained, but foments frustration and resentment because no one can get what they want.

Well, not no-one. They are giving away huge wadges of unobtanium to the paying players.

blacklotus

EDHdad said:

I think the issue is, I am not terrified of a world where everyone has access to every card in the format.  In poker, every player has access to the Queen of Spades.  In Monopoly, everyone has access to Boardwalk and Park Place. 

The argument that 'everyone will have all the same cards and play the same decks' is what already happens in Paper Magic.  A format like Legacy, Modern or Pauper might have 10,000 to 30,000 different cards available to it, but only about 2% or so of those cards see competitive play. 

Right now, in Standard, 50% of the metagame is 4 decks.  It had been like 90% of the metagame was 3 decks, but then they banned some stuff out of those decks (in Puzzle Quest, they can change a card if it's a problem, not that they always do).

In Modern, 50% of the metagame is 9 decks.  In Legacy, 50% of the metagame is 8 decks.  In Pauper, 50% of the metagame is 5 decks.

On an individual card basis, right now in Standard, Fatal Push appears in 55% of decks.  In Modern, Path to Exile is in 32% of decks.  In Pauper, Electrickery is in 53% of decks.  In Legacy, Brainstorm is in 66% of decks. 

All of those cards are commons and uncommons.  Most have been printed several times.  Legacy has over 30,000 cards available, yet the same card appears in 66% of the decks.  Brainstorm is a fixed version of Ancestral Recall, but Ancestral Recall is banned in Legacy, so they play Brainstorm.  Brainstorm isn't available to Modern, Wizards printed a fixed version of Brainstorm called Ponder, but that is too strong for Modern.  Then there was a fixed version of Ponder called Serum Visions, and Serum Visions is played in Modern.

In any given format, people will tend to play either the best deck, or deck which beats that deck.  But the same cards will show up over and over and over.  It's silly for Puzzle Quest to throttle access to cards which people are perfectly willing to buy.  No matter how chintzy the drop rate, people will still play their best threats, their best removal, their best ramp, their best draw / card selection abilities.  Your basic archetypes are still going to be aggro, control, midrange and combo.  And the cards which achieve those ends and the walkers which support those decks are going to be the ones that get played.

Definitely true. The only time people will play the lousier versions of a card is if they want to lose, or to meet some objective for the extra point (hardcast 6 zombies? 6 dragons? 6 vampires? 6 vehicles?)