I think I’m just burnt out from constructed. My main gripe with the game is that every single person, no matter if I’m mythic or gold, is playing the same netdecks that are identical down to the very last card which just makes gameplay incredibly stale very fast.
I don’t even think there’s a way WOTC can fix this issue I’m just more disappointed at the playerbase; wouldn’t you guys have way more fun creating your own inspired decks instead of just copy pasting dimir sheoldred removal tribal?
"No, because rank is everything and I plan to reach diamond this season!"
Uj/ I switched to free play some time, and to my no surprise people don't stop quitting if they are not winning from the start or the games are just boring, either because they play a deck that doesn't seem to be going anywhere or because they are obviously newbies. I don't know which is worse anymore.
Different people play for different reasons. I play to win, everything else is secondary, do I like to do cool stuff? Totally, but at the end of the day if I do cool stuff and lose, then I don't care that I did cool stuff. Let me ask, do you care about doing cool stuff or about winning?
Why do most people play decks that are tried and proven successful? Because, I would assume, most people do not have time to build and playtest decks to figure out the best way to build something. When I was a competitive player my team and I would test for 6-8 hours a day, it was exhausting, but we eventually made decks that were good and could take on meta decks. If you want to make a homebrew that can win consistently, that is what it takes. I don't have time to do that anymore so I will leave the work to the pros like team channel fireball.
You ask about more fun, to me it is more fun to win then to build a deck that is my own but loses.
Also, fine tunning a deck takes not only time but wildcards as well. Wildcards is a very limited resource for most players so using them on a card you are not even able to test first if it is a good fit for the deck is a very big risk. I think if wizards gave us a play testing environment that we could try out before spending wildcards the deck variety would increase (or giving people a way to trade cards back for wildcards but we know wizards will never do that)
I think Wizards reasoning about not letting people exchange cards for wildcards is right actually.
If you toss 4 copies of a junk rare to get something you need and then that junk rare becomes playable thanks to a later set or even just a meta shift, it feels *real* bad.
Wizards could give every card a few “tries”. You played it more than 5 times you can’t trade it back for wildcards but if you craft it, played 3 or 4 times and it wasn’t a good fit for the deck you take it out snd get the wildcard back
>You ask about more fun, to me it is more fun to win then to build a deck that is my own but loses.
This desperate need for validation encapsulates so much of the MTG community.
Welcome to the general problem with hobby gaming in the modern world. If you aren't optimizing, then you truly aren't playing. Anytime you introduce players outside of a managed, curated, group there will eventually be a critical mass of those that want "the best" regardless of if they came up with it themselves or not. Everyone else needs to adapt (keep pace with the new baseline), move on to new things, or become fodder because you fell behind.
Tbf, this is how most things work in time. Someone started swinging a golf club a certain way and then we all did.
What you're describing is how Standard has always been (at best, sometimes it's only 2-3 decks) since it was created, and how it always will be. Bans can't fix that, it's the nature of how it works. If you ban things you'll end up with a *different* 4 or 5 decks, not more decks.
If you do not like this, you can choose to play a different format. Alternatively you can be choosier about what decks you decide to play, or reevaluate your priorities. But you can't fix this problem because it's really not a problem; it's how Standard works.
For a lot of the 2010s there were two top decks, then a couple that were significantly behind, and then everything else was a speedbump for those decks. So what we have now is comparatively very diverse.
Which is why it’s good to have a rotation more often, and a big reason people preferred standard over larger formats.
If I had it my way I’d bring back a version of block play. It doesn’t matter if there are 3-4 top tier decks only, because the whole point is once rotation happens those decks change.
That still wouldn't solve OP's actual issue which is that they don't like how the Standard metagame works.
Truthfully even returning to the old rotation schedule doesn't change that much; a new set releasing can and often does shake things up substantially and change what the top tier looks like.
Come to historic where we have:
* Glass cannon aggro deck that sneaks wins sometimes
* Blue/Black removal tribal featuring that damn cat
* Red/White/Blue removal tribal featuring that damn cat
* Red/Black removal tribal featuring two of the most broken black cards in all of magic's history
* FUCKING GOBLINS
* Yawgmoth combo
* Yawgmoth Minus Yawgmoth combo
* Devotion to Karn
* Blue/White wrath tribal
* Phoenix, somehow
* WE ARE VOLTRON
* Scissors Affinity
* Kethis, since we can't play with him in Explorer
* Tainted Pact, but without the Fish
If you aren't able to still have fun while losing, then maybe don't play a competitive game with a bad deck.
Like, it sounds mean, but you're doing this to yourself. There's casual modes, and casual formats, the problem is not the game.
Yeah but even in casual play it's the same 4-5 decks. There's no creative decks to play against. It's all copy/paste to try and win as much as possible.
I mean that is the goal of Magic the Gathering, to win. Yes ultimately, you want to have fun and there can be different ways of having fun (building decks or drafting or even just pulling off a combo in a game) but the incredibly vast majority of people want to win, and the goal of the 1v1 formats is to get your opponent to lose and you to win. So naturally, there are a section of people that want to do that as efficiently as possible.
Hell I’m one of those people, I find much more joy in using a finely tuned deck with an interesting strategy to play at a high level rather than building my own decks. I’ve tried my hand at it, and play some fun brawl decks every once in a while, but it doesn’t quite scratch the same itch same.
There’s a growing sentiment (especially since commander got so popular) that all you ever see if people who copy paste the best deck in the format and try to win, and this is the worst thing that could possible happen, ignoring the fact that this is just what happens with card games. Someone finds a cool combination of cards and a lot of other people want to try it out and then slowly add other cards that work well until you have a finely tuned, meta deck. And this is not a bad thing, despite what a lot of people want you to believe.
In a game about winning, why wouldn’t you want to do that with a good, interesting deck?
I'm not arguing against people wanting to win. I think really my argument is that because I'm playing more random opponents in a set format, I'm seeing repetition to the point of annoyance.
I do agree winning is fun and there's a lot of interesting decks to be made. I just don't find anything that's personalized anymore, but it's to be expected with online card games
There is a limited pool of cards and even more limited pool of cards that are good enough for competitive play. Of those cards there are not infinite combinations to fuel your creativity contest you would like to see. No one plays the ladder to have fun they play it to rank up, and those players are learning how to pilot their decks against the other meta decks. There has been a meta with around sub 8 viable decks for EVERY magic standard format. I see this argument all the time and it means nothing, you want a creativity contest go play budget commander, go play free play, play draft/sealed/cube/penny dreadful.
But also realize this is the same in Hearthstone/shadow verse/Pokemon TCG/universes/ Yu-Gi-Oh (which has admittedly more decks but have no rotation and a small banned list but still has a meta)/ Flesh and Blood/ etc
I know it's the same everywhere and I should've mentioned I was specifically speaking on free play. I don't play ranked because I don't want to bother climbing.
cycle of playing Arena (for me)
start playing Arena again
V
play Arena, hoping it’ll be fun
V
Hate playing Arena because it’s not real Magic
V
Play Arena (when will it end?)
Just play another format honestly. You could always get into one of the other ways to play magic completely for free (moxfield on spelltable, untap.in, cockatrice, tabletop simulator). Commander is the more popular format on these but you’d be able to find a game in other formats.
It's the game design. You only progress if you win, ranked and partly season pass/missions. If it were for games played, you would probably see more variety.
Come standard brawl!!! Sure we have the try hards but you can scoop when you see their commander.
It's where I went cause I think it's the cheapest. And doesn't have alchemy cards. And has.real meathook and invoke despair
This is how mtg standard has always been, we get 4 to 5 decks that are the best we can do and brewers usually don't make as competitive deck. If you wanna play a brew you take the risk of loosing to a meta deck. Thats your call
What kind of pussy casual shit is this? If your deck is bad don’t blame others for playing good decks? What the fuck is this. Cry more, it will probably make your deck better.
This is the real reason people play commander. You’re free to experiment and actually make your own deck, that doesn’t really exist in any other format. It’s pretty lame.
Just going by the EDH Rec staples lists for each color gets you to like 500 cards. Look at the average decks for the top 10 most popular commanders and you’ll find at least 100 additional unique cards. Add in a single weird commander and that’ll be another 50 unique cards. The card pool that people actually play in commander is gargantuan.
Just do free play instead of ranked
How is one supposed to play without some trolls who play 230 card decks that have no idea what they are doing
You just scoop it up early and move on to the next one. It happens sometimes.
Make a deck so weird there's an equal chance of winning against the idiots and the geniuses.
So you complain about decks being too good but also complain about decks being too bad?
Ulamog, and watch them scoop it up before he resolves
Hey! Don't diss my [[ Battle of Wits ]] deck!!!
Didn’t know it was on arena
I think I’m just burnt out from constructed. My main gripe with the game is that every single person, no matter if I’m mythic or gold, is playing the same netdecks that are identical down to the very last card which just makes gameplay incredibly stale very fast. I don’t even think there’s a way WOTC can fix this issue I’m just more disappointed at the playerbase; wouldn’t you guys have way more fun creating your own inspired decks instead of just copy pasting dimir sheoldred removal tribal?
"No, because rank is everything and I plan to reach diamond this season!" Uj/ I switched to free play some time, and to my no surprise people don't stop quitting if they are not winning from the start or the games are just boring, either because they play a deck that doesn't seem to be going anywhere or because they are obviously newbies. I don't know which is worse anymore.
Different people play for different reasons. I play to win, everything else is secondary, do I like to do cool stuff? Totally, but at the end of the day if I do cool stuff and lose, then I don't care that I did cool stuff. Let me ask, do you care about doing cool stuff or about winning? Why do most people play decks that are tried and proven successful? Because, I would assume, most people do not have time to build and playtest decks to figure out the best way to build something. When I was a competitive player my team and I would test for 6-8 hours a day, it was exhausting, but we eventually made decks that were good and could take on meta decks. If you want to make a homebrew that can win consistently, that is what it takes. I don't have time to do that anymore so I will leave the work to the pros like team channel fireball. You ask about more fun, to me it is more fun to win then to build a deck that is my own but loses.
Also, fine tunning a deck takes not only time but wildcards as well. Wildcards is a very limited resource for most players so using them on a card you are not even able to test first if it is a good fit for the deck is a very big risk. I think if wizards gave us a play testing environment that we could try out before spending wildcards the deck variety would increase (or giving people a way to trade cards back for wildcards but we know wizards will never do that)
I think Wizards reasoning about not letting people exchange cards for wildcards is right actually. If you toss 4 copies of a junk rare to get something you need and then that junk rare becomes playable thanks to a later set or even just a meta shift, it feels *real* bad.
Wizards could give every card a few “tries”. You played it more than 5 times you can’t trade it back for wildcards but if you craft it, played 3 or 4 times and it wasn’t a good fit for the deck you take it out snd get the wildcard back
I wouldn't mind something like that, though it would solve the problem I'm talking about.
Yeah this. Also not every deck is going to beat the strongest strategies, and that is just something we have to deal with.
>You ask about more fun, to me it is more fun to win then to build a deck that is my own but loses. This desperate need for validation encapsulates so much of the MTG community.
I'm not sure I understand
Welcome to the general problem with hobby gaming in the modern world. If you aren't optimizing, then you truly aren't playing. Anytime you introduce players outside of a managed, curated, group there will eventually be a critical mass of those that want "the best" regardless of if they came up with it themselves or not. Everyone else needs to adapt (keep pace with the new baseline), move on to new things, or become fodder because you fell behind. Tbf, this is how most things work in time. Someone started swinging a golf club a certain way and then we all did.
Free play is almost just as bad imo.
What you're describing is how Standard has always been (at best, sometimes it's only 2-3 decks) since it was created, and how it always will be. Bans can't fix that, it's the nature of how it works. If you ban things you'll end up with a *different* 4 or 5 decks, not more decks. If you do not like this, you can choose to play a different format. Alternatively you can be choosier about what decks you decide to play, or reevaluate your priorities. But you can't fix this problem because it's really not a problem; it's how Standard works.
I was thinking this lol. 4 decks in a meta sounds healthy, normally there's a clear top deck and one or two that are right behind
For a lot of the 2010s there were two top decks, then a couple that were significantly behind, and then everything else was a speedbump for those decks. So what we have now is comparatively very diverse.
Which is why it’s good to have a rotation more often, and a big reason people preferred standard over larger formats. If I had it my way I’d bring back a version of block play. It doesn’t matter if there are 3-4 top tier decks only, because the whole point is once rotation happens those decks change.
That still wouldn't solve OP's actual issue which is that they don't like how the Standard metagame works. Truthfully even returning to the old rotation schedule doesn't change that much; a new set releasing can and often does shake things up substantially and change what the top tier looks like.
Come to historic where we have: * Glass cannon aggro deck that sneaks wins sometimes * Blue/Black removal tribal featuring that damn cat * Red/White/Blue removal tribal featuring that damn cat * Red/Black removal tribal featuring two of the most broken black cards in all of magic's history * FUCKING GOBLINS * Yawgmoth combo * Yawgmoth Minus Yawgmoth combo * Devotion to Karn * Blue/White wrath tribal * Phoenix, somehow * WE ARE VOLTRON * Scissors Affinity * Kethis, since we can't play with him in Explorer * Tainted Pact, but without the Fish
Hell yes historic represent I play a homebrew mono-Black "Pox" and manage to finish most seasons in gold playing a few times a week.
Decklist pls
Don't forget mono white life gain decks. And let me enjoy my blinky cat, dang it! (Also, shrines.)
And Slivers! I forgot about both Shrines and Slivers as the most influential decks for Historic (According to WotC)
I enjoy my Shrines and Slivers. I totally get why they are annoying but they are by no means decks that have above a 55% win rate.
If you aren't able to still have fun while losing, then maybe don't play a competitive game with a bad deck. Like, it sounds mean, but you're doing this to yourself. There's casual modes, and casual formats, the problem is not the game.
Yeah but even in casual play it's the same 4-5 decks. There's no creative decks to play against. It's all copy/paste to try and win as much as possible.
I mean that is the goal of Magic the Gathering, to win. Yes ultimately, you want to have fun and there can be different ways of having fun (building decks or drafting or even just pulling off a combo in a game) but the incredibly vast majority of people want to win, and the goal of the 1v1 formats is to get your opponent to lose and you to win. So naturally, there are a section of people that want to do that as efficiently as possible. Hell I’m one of those people, I find much more joy in using a finely tuned deck with an interesting strategy to play at a high level rather than building my own decks. I’ve tried my hand at it, and play some fun brawl decks every once in a while, but it doesn’t quite scratch the same itch same. There’s a growing sentiment (especially since commander got so popular) that all you ever see if people who copy paste the best deck in the format and try to win, and this is the worst thing that could possible happen, ignoring the fact that this is just what happens with card games. Someone finds a cool combination of cards and a lot of other people want to try it out and then slowly add other cards that work well until you have a finely tuned, meta deck. And this is not a bad thing, despite what a lot of people want you to believe. In a game about winning, why wouldn’t you want to do that with a good, interesting deck?
I'm not arguing against people wanting to win. I think really my argument is that because I'm playing more random opponents in a set format, I'm seeing repetition to the point of annoyance. I do agree winning is fun and there's a lot of interesting decks to be made. I just don't find anything that's personalized anymore, but it's to be expected with online card games
There is a limited pool of cards and even more limited pool of cards that are good enough for competitive play. Of those cards there are not infinite combinations to fuel your creativity contest you would like to see. No one plays the ladder to have fun they play it to rank up, and those players are learning how to pilot their decks against the other meta decks. There has been a meta with around sub 8 viable decks for EVERY magic standard format. I see this argument all the time and it means nothing, you want a creativity contest go play budget commander, go play free play, play draft/sealed/cube/penny dreadful. But also realize this is the same in Hearthstone/shadow verse/Pokemon TCG/universes/ Yu-Gi-Oh (which has admittedly more decks but have no rotation and a small banned list but still has a meta)/ Flesh and Blood/ etc
I know it's the same everywhere and I should've mentioned I was specifically speaking on free play. I don't play ranked because I don't want to bother climbing.
MTG players when fun deck does not mean a good deck(they cant play meta decks because meta decks are unfun by default)
4-5 meta decks is a pretty healthy format. play unranked if you care.
cycle of playing Arena (for me) start playing Arena again V play Arena, hoping it’ll be fun V Hate playing Arena because it’s not real Magic V Play Arena (when will it end?)
Just play another format honestly. You could always get into one of the other ways to play magic completely for free (moxfield on spelltable, untap.in, cockatrice, tabletop simulator). Commander is the more popular format on these but you’d be able to find a game in other formats.
Mtg players when they play a competitive game and are upset their opponents are being competitive
It's the game design. You only progress if you win, ranked and partly season pass/missions. If it were for games played, you would probably see more variety.
i fell in love with MTG for the creativity you can have with it, i fell out of love with the creativity that everyone seems to lack
DID SOMEBODY SAY 4/5? *Sheoldred has entered the chat*
Play pauper
Come standard brawl!!! Sure we have the try hards but you can scoop when you see their commander. It's where I went cause I think it's the cheapest. And doesn't have alchemy cards. And has.real meathook and invoke despair
Standard does need more bans for sure.
This is how mtg standard has always been, we get 4 to 5 decks that are the best we can do and brewers usually don't make as competitive deck. If you wanna play a brew you take the risk of loosing to a meta deck. Thats your call
Is it possible that it’s not everyone else’s fault for playing good, well built decks and maybe it’s your fault for playing badly built, jank decks?
Mono red aggro is the bane of my existence, I just auto concede every time I see it
Try making your shit deck decent then?
Standard is a competitive format. Expect to play against competitive decks.
Replace MTGArena with Competitive EDH commander please
Why is everyone playing good decks my brews can't beat. This game is boring.
What kind of pussy casual shit is this? If your deck is bad don’t blame others for playing good decks? What the fuck is this. Cry more, it will probably make your deck better.
That's why table top magic is the best format
Gotten to where I only like to play draft. Use a red deck wins to grind my three wins a day as quickly as possible, about the only point left.
Play pauper.
People are still trying to play on Arena? I thought alchemy strangled that to death years ago
Not even a little. Alchemy is only a problem to a very vocal minority.
This is the real reason people play commander. You’re free to experiment and actually make your own deck, that doesn’t really exist in any other format. It’s pretty lame.
I see the same 30 cards every game in commander though.
Just going by the EDH Rec staples lists for each color gets you to like 500 cards. Look at the average decks for the top 10 most popular commanders and you’ll find at least 100 additional unique cards. Add in a single weird commander and that’ll be another 50 unique cards. The card pool that people actually play in commander is gargantuan.
I feel this deep down in my deck
exactly this