Please Nerf cycling

andrewvanmarle

Matthew said:9

andrewvanmarle said:

And then Ixalan is launched and everyone plays a new flavour of the month and the same group will cry nerf all over again.... 

Do you seriously think people will stop using Cycling decks just because there's a new set of cards introduced?

Given what Oktagon has done for the game so far, I am cautiously optimistic that they won't be introducing a mechanic as broken as Cycling has proven to be. And if that does turn out to be the case, we will continue to see people abuse Cycling as a way to win games. I'm not pointing fingers, by the way. I use it more often than not, for the simple fact that it makes winning a match with full points much more likely. But I still think it should be nerfed. The leaderboard right now for my Platinum bracket in this iteration Hour of Devastation is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Top 10 placements are all at perfect scores right now, and I'm sure there are several more below that tenth place. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of those players are taking advantage of the Cycling mechanic to achieve those scores.

Ghhh
Yes i do think people will move on, because they HAVE allready. I play platinum (like you) and I encounter less and less dedicated cycling deck. Players are done with the swiping when there are other, faster and just as reliable ways to win. 

I think it's poorly thought through to assert that a significant amount of players playing perfect scores are all playing dedicated cycling decks. Especially when the secondary objectives are not favourable to cycling decks. 

[edit: volrak is right, so i removed my remark that got too personal]  

And yes when ixalan hits, people will want to play new stuff and the last of the cycling decks will fade away. 

Volrak

Eh.. no need for anyone to get personal.

I'm also seeing fewer cycling decks lately, and I agree that Ixalan hitting will likely reduce overall use further as people explore new cards and mechanics, but none of that changes the simple fact that cycling as a mechanic, due to a few key cards, has an objectively and demonstrably extreme power level relative to the pool of possible alternative approaches at the same rarity level.  Clearly, opinions vary about whether that fact alone means the game would be better if those key cards were nerfed.  But because what makes a "better" game is a value judgement, it means different things to different people, and contradictory opinions on each side can each be perfectly valid.

Bil

Gideon said:

You can choose not to cycle. The AI does.

I deeply agree with your point of view, and I wonder why players talk about cycling as a fatality.

Facing a cycle deck is an easy win? In fact facing Greg is almost always an easy win if you got a decent deck... The only thing that brings a bit of salt to the game is trying to complete the secundaries. 

It allows "poor" players to make their way to the top? It seems a good thing to me... We always hear about the gap between newcomers and older players... Well, despite cycling brokenness and defects it may at least reduce this gap a little bit.

Cycling is bad, but at least it's available for most players, while some other broken cards are breaking the game but remain available for a few players that could luckily pull it from a pack (nothing to do with strategy, skill or personal investment). I personally avoid playing HUF, deploy or swarm as I'm interested in playing, not in instant kills. 

Overall, I do not like to play cycling neither, but I sometimes do it if an objective requires it.
I don't care about facing a brainless cycle deck, I just wait and hope the next game will offer more challenge and an interesting deck to face. 

After all, there's no point being pissed of the success of other players in events... You can still make your way to the top 5 and guess what, you can do it without cycling, loops or broken combos. Many players still do it that way. 
  

Houdin

Rather than getting wound up I will just say this.

1. After playing for two years with thousands of hours and dollars invested it is a ridiculous statement to make that a "new player" should be able to beat my decks with ease 99% of the time.
The whole point of magic as a game is the constant evolution of new strategies.
The above statement is the same as saying wizards should release a pre made deck that any newbie can buy for next to nothing and instantly be able to play and win against world ranked players. Don't be ridiculous. 

2. Cycling is far more destructive to this game than even pre nerf barril was. If you can't see that the meta of a game is broken when for almost a year the M.ost E.ffective T.actic A.vailable is playing a combination of two rare value cards for a 99% win rate than really I don't know what to say. 

Honestly is omni broken as Well? Huf? Yes, absolutely they are. However, not as broken as cycling is. Simply due to card cost and rarity level.

There is a really good thought process over in the strategy section on buffs and needs by set authored by @Mainloop25 .
Whereas I may have a different opinion on most of the cards listed and some that arent. The idea itself is spot on. This game needs a major overhaul with card and pw rebalancing.

A top tier player should struggle to obtain an 85 to 90% win ratio. 

A new player should not even be close to that if playing against a tip tier deck.

This also brings up the idea that mastery levels should be changed to reflect win percentages over playing some cards enough times in a deck.

span_argoman

I would say it's really something to consider though. We are concerned about finding ways for newer players to progress in the game so that more are keen to stay on rather than discarding it within the first month. And I agree that it is something we need to look at to bring in more new blood to this game.

At the same time there has to be a feeling of progression for the elite players too to keep them going in the game. And if they are already at the top, then I believe that sense of progress has to express itself as how well one can hold onto their top placing, ie. how one can continue to stay highly ranked in events relative to the other players.

These two desires conflict with each other, and yet I think they are both important for the game. I don't have any suggestions on how to manage them successfully but hopefully others have better insights to contribute.

julianus

[MOD NOTE] Edited to remove references to players attacking each other [//MOD NOTE]

Lots of people have acknowledged that cycling is very powerful. There have been several thoughtful views expressed on game balance and principles. I think we all want the game to succeed and continue, and if this forum is going to be relevant to that goal, it's better for discussion to be focused on game issues. 

To quote the ever-reasonable @Volrak, "But because what makes a "better" game is a value judgement, it means different things to different people, and contradictory opinions on each side can each be perfectly valid."

bk1234

[MOD MIC ON] This is a topic that many of us feel strongly about -- please remember that we all come from different skill levels and time in game and our opinions are molded by our game experience. Attacking other players is a violation of forum rule #7 and will result in warnings and or jail time. [//MOD MIC]

ElfNeedsFood

The problem with cycling decks is this: it’s an almost auto-win to play with and also an almost auto-win to play against. It’s a boring deck to play against even if I choose not to enter a cycling deck. 

As mentioned, the fix to NP is pretty simple, don’t add mana, just reduce cycling costs. Ideally never below 1 mana.

FindingHeart8

These same points have been brought up in the past 5+ nerf conversations...except in past threads most involved were on board with keeping cycling.

For reasons similar to what @Waschecht said, and I'll briefly add on a few:

1) Cycling is easy to win, but the drawback is it isn't fun.  In a game we aren't getting paid to win, not having fun is a heavy cost.

2) Easy to acquire the cards, so gives the beginners an opportunity to actual compete with the elites.

3) AI can't use it.  So nerfing it doesn't help anyone.

4) It's one of the only ways you can beat Bolas.  Yeah it's not the only way (I think there was 6 methods counted in total as of November), but it was one of the most popular ones.

ElfNeedsFood

FindingHeart8 said:

4) It's one of the only ways you can beat Bolas.  Yeah it's not the only way (I think there was 6 methods counted in total as of November), but it was one of the most popular ones.

The Bolas event (RGP) is not really one to point to as a banner achievement.  It’s like the devs were on a stint to give everyone even more easy buttons. 

FindingHeart8

ElfNeedsFood said:

FindingHeart8 said:

4) It's one of the only ways you can beat Bolas.  Yeah it's not the only way (I think there was 6 methods counted in total as of November), but it was one of the most popular ones.

The Bolas event (RGP) is not really one to point to as a banner achievement.  It’s like the devs were on a stint to give everyone even more easy buttons. 

To date, that Bolas boss is my least favorite boss, pre-Booster Crafting.  Even with cycling, I only had maybe a 70% chance of victory, but a guaranteed 15min commitment of continuously rearranging my hand to try to race Bolas to who would combo first.

It's a banner achievement because cycling was the only way many (even veterans) had to stand a chance against overpowered bosses, and that taking those methods away isn't fair to a large player base that couldn't win otherwise.

Gilesclone

I think both of the other top node battles are harder and less boring than Bolas 

julianus

I'll add in here that the Magic designers obviously intended for cycling to be a full game mechanic, not just a niche gimmick or a way to draw a few cards here and there, and any hypothetical rebalancing should be based on that principle.

I don't play the paper game, but if you look at those cards you'll see they're not too different from our versions.


 

FindingHeart8

julianus said:

I'll add in here that the Magic designers obviously intended for cycling to be a full game mechanic, not just a niche gimmick or a way to draw a few cards here and there, and any rebalancing should be based on that principle.

I don't play the paper game, but if you look at those cards you'll see they're not too different from our versions.


 

Yes Julianus, it is indeed possible to go crazy with cycling in the mtg card game as well, the mechanics are fairly similar, which is another reason not to nerf

FindingHeart8

Gilesclone said:

I think both of the other top node battles are harder and less boring than Bolas 

Less boring definitely, but the other two in that node were a joke.  The demon's only real offense was No Mercy, and the creatures (which he continuously killed at the most convenient times for you to only hit you for an almost insignificant amount of damage), other other one I barely remember...I think it was just a bunch of moderately large creatures with green ramp.  I usually faced them with Samut though, you might've had more trouble with a different planeswalker.

Ciotog

Only thing is that you can deck yourself in paper mtg...your deck never runs out in pqmtg

FindingHeart8

Ciotog said:

Only thing is that you can deck yourself in paper mtg...your deck never runs out in pqmtg

That's hardly a barrier for a well-crafting cycling deck.  You don't exile the card in paper mtg when you cycle, and there's an abundance of ways to easily recycle your graveyard back into your library.

wereotter

julianus said:

I'll add in here that the Magic designers obviously intended for cycling to be a full game mechanic, not just a niche gimmick or a way to draw a few cards here and there, and any hypothetical rebalancing should be based on that principle.

I don't play the paper game, but if you look at those cards you'll see they're not too different from our versions.


 

The primary difference, as I noted in an earlier post, is also the hoops you have to jump through in the physical game that are entirely removed from this one. First, New Perspectives requires you to have a full hand in order to cycle for free, New Perspectives here has no restriction to its benefit.

Also Faith of the Devoted and Drake Haven, even with New Perspectives, are limited by how much mana you have available to you. You can't create 100 drakes in one turn using Drake Haven (even with an enormous deck) in paper magic unless you also have 100 mana to spend on said drakes.

So the easiest way to nerf cycling here is to have Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted drain mana from you in order to activate, and if you have no mana to drain, you get no effect. You can still cycle to get whatever answers you need, which seems fair, but you can't do the rest.

ZW2007-

julianus said:

I'll add in here that the Magic designers obviously intended for cycling to be a full game mechanic, not just a niche gimmick or a way to draw a few cards here and there, and any hypothetical rebalancing should be based on that principle.

I don't play the paper game, but if you look at those cards you'll see they're not too different from our versions.


 

I think something you are missing here is that in paper, the actual game play is very different. You can only play one land per turn as your source of mana which restricts what you can do. You can't get lucky in paper and cast Drake Haven and New Perspectives on turn 1. Even if you could, you are still limited by Drake Haven's activation cost. In paper, you can't even cast NP until turn 6 which is an eternity. In a perfect scenario though, you wouldn't even want New Perspectives because by the time you could finally cast it, you'd already have enough drakes to kill your opponent. I can't imagine anyone playing New Perspectives in a game of paper, ever. Paper prices seem to support this since it costs as low as 5¢. Cycling itself is a very strong mechanic in paper because drawing cards is a very strong thing to do. However, these enchantments are not very strong in paper.

As for people "seeing less and less cycling decks", that's confirmation bias if I ever saw it. I feel like I still see it all the time but that proves nothing. Only the devs can know how much or how little cycling is used.

Saying that cycling doesn't need nerfed because the AI can't beat you with it is absurd. If Greg could beat you with it, would you want it nerfed or would you be fine with it? Suppose the devs decided to teach Greg how to properly utilize NP and Drake Haven, how would that make you feel? I think it's safe to assume you would hate it more than anything else you've ever hated in this game, especially since Greg would just cycle infinitely and keep making a larger and larger drake stack that would never attack.

Nerfing it does help everyone because it removes the crutch and forces people into new strategies. Also, there isn't an objective in the game that a cycling deck can't complete perfectly.

I personally used a cycling deck for the 10 or less damage node. I only missed 2 points on that node and that was due to bad luck/gem boards for me. Both times the AI got 20+ mana over three turns and cast haste creatures that hit me for at least 10 before my 4th turn and in both cases I won on my 4th turn.

naphomci

Houdin said:

These three cards create two combo decks that give the player a 99% guaranteed win rate.

This implies that other strategies don't give similar win rates. This game is not hard - the AI simply does not play well.

What I fail to see with cycling, is how is this different than pre-legacy when half (or some amount) of the meta was Olivia + Piggy? The very nature of this game, and the limited card options (10 different per deck) means there will always be some absurdly powerful option that offers 99%+ win rates with half-decent play.