Enraged was introduced in the Terrors in the Shadows event (which always gets tinykittied when acronymed) in the SOI block. For those that weren't playing at the time, Emrakul was making everything go cray-cray on Innistrad. People were turning into werewolves, villagers were going nuts even their benevolent angel Avacyn became a blood thirsty angel of death. What a cool concept to have an in game clock (5 turns) before everyone went bonkers and started doing double damage in this event.
But why is everyone still so ANGRY? We were enraged in EMK (still makes sense), but also in EmO, FirF, ToTP, ToA, and Arena. Didn't we trap that crazy Eldrazi in a moon? Why is everyone still going bonkers?
But seriously, enraged was an interesting mechanic but should not be the baseline for all PvP events. It really screws up the pace of the games and adds a lot of tedium to the events. Sometimes it makes things easier, sometimes much more challenging, but it always impacts how we play and build.
If the dev's want to make the events more challenging, I believe there needs to be some new ideas on how to make that happen. I think the community is utterly sick of enraged events 2-4 times per week. (I think it makes sense in TotP.. although rotating between other "overlays" than enraged, supercharged and legendary would be even better.)
Here are some ideas that ZW2007- posted a few months ago. I am sure the devs and community can come up with a lot of interesting ideas to add spice to the game.
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/642083#Comment_642083
I have a lot of ideas for planes effects:
-You may activate your planeswalker's first loyalty ability for free each turn. (Still limited to one planeswalker ability per turn.) -Loyalty matches are tripled. -[Insert color here] gems give +10 mana, all other colors give -2. (Planeswalker's specific mana gains are negated by this effect.)
-Whenever you cast a card, fetch the next card of that type from your deck, it is free. Cards cast for free this way cannot trigger this effect.
-Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under you control, it deals damage equal to it's power to your opponent. -Whenever you cast a card, your opponent discards a card.
-Creatures can't attack.
-The first spell you cast each turn is returned to your hand and gains full mana
-Players may have 4 creatures on the battlefield.
-All supports cost 5 less and enter the battlefield with 5 shields. At the beginning of your turn, each support you control loses 2 shields.
-Damage dealt to your opponent by creatures, spells, or abilities controlled by you is dealt to you instead.
-Activate 1: gain 100 life.
-When you planeswalk to [insert name here (Kaladesh if they name planes in this way)] energize the board. Overload 3: something.
I know some of these ideas only work, or work better in the context of Zach's original idea. But these are some great ideas and I believe the community can figure out some fun overlays to add to the game so that we have more variety than plain vanilla, enraged, supercharged, or legendary.
I think they should just push the enraged mode to start around the 10th round or so. I like the explosiveness of when it happens, but I think it just happens way too early, especially with the kludgy deck distribution. Sometimes I don't even draw my third embalm creature until way too late in the match.