MTG Arena and the general lack of imagination of today's youth

[Ferret]

/Begin Rant

So, I finally got back into playing MTG:Arena and got a few cards from the recent sets and thought that I'd create a few original decks - unfortunately, I appear to be the only player that seems to enjoy doing that. I can count on one hand (after severing two fingers) the most common decks I face: Red Burn with the exact card coming out first (that annoying 1/2 Prowse critter - I'll remember the name later), Cheap blue control (also known as Mother-May-I) and Green/White Enchantment. That's it. Do you know how frustrating that is? Of course, that's not the only ones. Occasionally I'll face some deck that utilizes nothing but Rares and Mythics to come up with combos that keep you from playing.

What's worse is that WotC likes to publish all of the winning decks so that the kids will duplicate them instead of creating decks of their own. I know that they're out to make money, but aren't they the slightest bit concerned about the quality of the games that are played? They used to have forums similar to ours where they would interact with the players and get their feedback. Now, the feedback consists of "Did you have fun Y/N?". Seriously.

I mean this is the reason the CPA was created nearly a quarter of a century ago: To give a voice to the players that actually gave a damn about the fun that they were having. Now, it's all about winning - by any means necessary - except independent thought, of course...

End rant/

 

[Oversoul]

So, at least in part, this is a rant about MTG Arena. I have my own gripes with the platform, and I sympathize there.

Red Burn with the exact card coming out first (that annoying 1/2 Prowse critter - I'll remember the name later)

Monastery Swiftspear.

What's worse is that WotC likes to publish all of the winning decks so that the kids will duplicate them instead of creating decks of their own. I know that they're out to make money, but aren't they the slightest bit concerned about the quality of the games that are played? They used to have forums similar to ours where they would interact with the players and get their feedback. Now, the feedback consists of "Did you have fun Y/N?". Seriously.

In the right context, at least, there's a valid purpose behind publishing that data. This is a bit of a tangent, but I've been a longtime follower of the Vintage and Legacy formats even though I'm not really a tournament player. The way those formats have gone, MTGO has become increasingly important as the default place where most games happen. WotC used to publish full data from their MTGO events in those formats. This wasn't too important to the stereotypical "netdecker" because that person was just going to copy a winning deck anyway and didn't care about the rest of the data. But to anyone who cared about serious analysis, having so much data to work with was a boon. Some paper events only published the top 8, or they'd dump all the decks without giving any information on placement outside the top 8 (so the 9th place deck would appear the same as a deck that went 0-2, drop). But with MTGO, people could break down the win percentage of one archetype against another, or see which sideboard options translated into winning more matches. It let the community more accurately gauge the health of those formats and it let prospective innovators get a better picture of how they could build decks to attack the metagame.

And then WotC took it all away. The explanation was focused on their belief that giving the community access to such complete data would cause the Standard format to be solved and become stale too quickly, but they took the data away across the board, publishing only a curated selection. And that's a shame.

I mean this is the reason the CPA was created nearly a quarter of a century ago: To give a voice to the players that actually gave a damn about the fun that they were having. Now, it's all about winning - by any means necessary - except independent thought, of course...

I didn't find the CPA until 2003, but I've gone back and read a whole lot of the old posts from the site's early days. Also, I did visit The Dojo in the late 90's. I think I get it. And sure, the general frustration among players with a fun-centered mentality clashing with (mind-numbing) tournament grinder types was a catalyst for the formation of the CPA. But you can't blame today's youth for that! They weren't even born yet.

I play EDH at a local game store, often with some younger folks, and I don't find them to be notably less creative than us old-timers.

 

[turgy22]

/Begin Rant

blahblahblah

End rant/

I've been playing Arena for a few years and I almost exclusively do limited formats nowadays. Alchemy killed historic for me and standard is stale for basically the reasons you stated. My current favorite formats are quick draft, sealed (when it's available), starter deck duel and bot match (I like to play under-powered singleton decks and just enjoy the card interactions).

Anyway, I'm always interested in games that have some level of variety and competitive balance. Feel free to send me a friend request and we could play a direct match in whatever format you like (display name: turgy22#60872).

Be aware that I'm really lazy about building decks and have found over time that it's hard to find dueling partners that actually agree on what an appropriate power level for a deck should be. So if you want to see some variety and feel evenly matched, feel free to share some decklists that you've built and I'll be happy to replicate them to play against. I'd also be up for a match with leftover draft or sealed decks or a single-set-singleton like a tried to start up here. Just as long as I know what to expect going into a game, I really don't care.

 

[Ferret]

I didn't find the CPA until 2003, but I've gone back and read a whole lot of the old posts from the site's early days. Also, I did visit The Dojo in the late 90's. I think I get it. And sure, the general frustration among players with a fun-centered mentality clashing with (mind-numbing) tournament grinder types was a catalyst for the formation of the CPA. But you can't blame today's youth for that! They weren't even born yet.

I play EDH at a local game store, often with some younger folks, and I don't find them to be notably less creative than us old-timers.

Well, there's a huge difference between playing paper at your local store where your opponent is across the table from you (and within a choking hand's reach) and online where you can hide behind an alias and monitor. You can play the same deck as all of the "winners" and feel no fear of repercussions (especially in a game that offers no communication abilities between non-friend players). They just play their same generic decks as everyone else, get their wins, pat themselves on the back and move on to their next victim - meanwhile, I'm beating my head against my keyboard as new and actually CREATIVE decks aren't even allowed to play as every spell I cast is either burned, buried, or countered. So, you could say that I'm a little frustrated at these kids (and I call them kids because I can assume that a majority of them are younger than my almost 54 year old self)...

(Turgy, I sent you a friend request!

 

[Oversoul]

and within a choking hand's reach

You can play the same deck as all of the "winners" and feel no fear of repercussions (especially in a game that offers no communication abilities between non-friend players).

Yeah, the lack of communication options is infuriating.

 

[Ferret]

It's funny, but I remember seeing people complaining about chat (especially in-game) on the old Arena forums. While, I'm not a fan of in-game chance (too much chance for collusion), I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of "lobby" chat where folks can discuss strategies, look for direct matches and friends, and communicate with more than just "Hello", "Oops", "Nice", or "Good Game" (the last I really hate to see from the aforementioned "winner" decks...

 

[Ferret]

I was actually happy this morning. I encountered some nifty decks. I beat a few of them and the other players appeared gracious in defeat (by saying "Good Game" or "Nice" when I pulled off some interesting plays with my mono Green deck. I even beat one of those annoying mono-blue control decks because they couldn't keep up with me. Nothing like baiting counters before casting my REAL spells...

 

[turgy22]

They just play their same generic decks as everyone else, get their wins, pat themselves on the back and move on to their next victim - meanwhile, I'm beating my head against my keyboard as new and actually CREATIVE decks aren't even allowed to play as every spell I cast is either burned, buried, or countered.

I don't think what you're seeing is necessary intentional by your opponents. Arena is based on rewards and achievements that you can typically only attain through wins. There are goals for both daily wins and weekly wins and some players try to hit the limits on both of those. The fastest way to do this is with decks that have a high probability of winning.
Heck, I used to just try to get one win a day (for the 250 gold first level reward) and had a hard time doing it with a homebrew. For a while, I was playing mono red in standard just to get my win in, but quit after a while when it felt like too much of a chore. Now, I go in with the starter decks, which tend to lead to more balanced matches.

(Turgy, I sent you a friend request!

Hmmm... I did not receive it. Want to try again?

Yeah, the lack of communication options is infuriating.

I have to seriously disagree on this one. I love the lack of communication options. The amount of vitriol that came across in your average game of MTGO made it completely unplayable. Even in Arena, you get spammed "Good Game" or have people hit "Nice" when you make an obvious mistake. These same people would be spamming horrible, horrible things if they were provided more options. No, thanks.

 

[Ferret]

Hi again! (Turgy, I sent another request - it is Turgy22#60872, right?)

So, I have to agree about in-game chat. The toxicity I saw on MTGO made me hate in-game chat and the lobby chat was mostly just people advertising selling cards, but since Arena doesn't allow trading (hopefully never), we can be sure to see that. I just wouldn't mind seeing folks asking if others would like to direct challenge to help them test out new decks instead of the usual "trial by fire" method they have now. Arena has a lot more potential than Online, but if only WotC/Hasbro learns from their mistakes (which they rarely do).

 

[turgy22]

Hi again! (Turgy, I sent another request - it is Turgy22#60872, right?)

Request accepted! Hit me up for a match if you ever see me online.

 

[Ferret]

Will do! Looking forward to it!

 

[Ferret]

You know, I've given it some thought and I realize that it's not the players' fault that so many deck archetypes are used these days. It's WotC's fault. They've dumbed down the game so much that it's next to impossible to create anything original these days.

Think about it: They make a bunch of blue and black cards that revolve around poison counters and proliferation. It would be require little imagination to put together a rather solid deck that prevents your opponent from playing while you quickly get them to ten poison counters. And, this concept isn't really new. Going back to around the turn of the century I saw lots of sets that put out so many tribal cards that once again, it was easy to build decks without having to even think that much. You just had to buy enough cards (which WotC/Hasbro is all about!) to buy/duplicate a rather dumb deck and you're off to the races.

 

[Shabbaman]

The (or better, one of the many) downsides of Arena is that you can't interact with your opponent. So there's no way to give or receive feedback about the deck you just played (or are going to play). That doesn't stimulate originality.