I have a friend who told me "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" when I complained about the constant product overload. So I took his advice. Now he complains that my decks are boring because I haven't bought any new cards for almost 3 years lol.
The point that WotC is ignoring is that "You don't have to play with it" is a false statement. You do not have to put the card into your deck, but in a game of magic, all the cards in the decks are part of the game. You are playing with your opponent, therefore you do "have" to play with "it" if your opponent uses the card in their deck.
I keep making this point as well. Competitive players are gonna gravitate towards the strongest cards, always, so you know you'll see some UB cards basically every round of a major tournament now (because of course WOTC will make them broken to drive sales). Even for the casual scene, try getting everyone in a Commander group to play only with MTG-lore (non UB cards). Probably possible but very limiting to the number of people you can find for your group.
Finally i hear someone say it! I've heard the same thing mutiple times, but in a way i am forced to play with the cards because my opponent can still play with them. I really wish they would make something like a Universes Within and a Universes Beyond format maybe
i left my own comment touching on this and several other issues i have w/ this "philosophy", but i agree. Many people might say that you can just ask them to play w/o UB in casual formats like EDH but even then it's not that simple bc, for one, they might not remember every card in their deck or if it has UB or a card from whichever set, OR they might only have one deck option OR no cards they can swap in or so many possibilities that you just cant consistently rely on just "asking your opppnents nicely"
If enough people is not buying it, they will drop it. If it sells, there is a market, if there is a market and you don't like the direction, stop playing. Complaining on the Internet, achieves nothing; sales numbers talk, not tantrums on internet.
@easyygo3008 If there were no connection between sales numbers and community sentiment, you wouldn't see so many so many companies trying to pay for positive reviews of a product. Marketing is such big business because it works
I was literally just about to make a comment that wizards just assumes everyone is playing cube or magical christmas land commander where communication within a playgroup is always perfect.
@@easyygo3008 You absolute wanker. Complaining (on the internet or otherwise) is meant to show that you care. That you want to quit if things stay as they are now, and therefore telling WotC "I'm one of the voices that would pay for this, but not for that, take me into account when choosing what you do". Not to mention the possibility to convince someone else to also vote with their wallet, making a change not only by yourself but as a community.
@@easyygo3008 Dude, you literally skipped over the part where if all you have to say is basically stop talking, then you're doing exactly what you have a problem with. You're complaining about complaining. Why should anyone take hypocritical advice? People are annoyed, but unfortunately, too many keep buying the most of these products so that WotC just keeps cranking out the problems. Eventually the game will dwindle down in popularity and they'll have to figure out why when it's too late. And just because we're complaining on the Internet doesn't mean we're not also using our wallet. I haven't bought a single secret lair, I barely bought any product at all in 2024 resorting mostly to getting singles.
"Don't like it, don't buy it. You don't have to interact with it." Cool I don't take two from this draw then, since I don't have to interact with your Sheoldred
Sure, but complaining is all we get out of the Magic community. I don’t watch much Magic content outside of MTGGoldfish because of the universal cynicism people have for the game.
I’ve never even held a Magic card but seeing all those 3rd party IP sets makes me feel so bad for ya’ll. Having a game morph from a unique fantasy vibe to “Mickey v SpongeBob” in real time must be insanely frustrating. Hope it gets better for ya’ll soon
I really struggle to understand how people can unironically say "if you don't like it, don't play it" in a multiplayer-focused game where other players' choices have a huge impact on your experience. Not to mention, as you said, it's not possible to know for certain if you will or won't like something in advance. Some things might surprise you. Some things might seem great at first but quickly become stale. Some things might grow on you as time goes on. It's simply not possible to anticipate these things.
It's because they're solitaire players. They're the type who doesn't really pay any attention to their opponent or their deck. They don't really understand why anyone might have a problem with what someone else plays - unless of course they play a deck that prevents their deck working, then they're very liberal with the ban requests.
Yeah, like I feel bad about how hard I went in this video. But "If you don't like it, don't play it" is just the same as being told to shut up and quit the game to me
I mostly play Modern and Yugioh!. LotR (because of Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring) and MH3 just decimated the format. Trying to make cards relevant in an eternal format means you have to have some serious powercreep. I'm used to it in Yugioh!, where we get a new Tier 1 deck every other set and it's been that way for 22 years, but Magic just isn't designed for that. Designing for Commander is going to kill Magic.
@@Kylora2112 Tier 1 (1 to maybe 4 decks) feel like a fun boss challenge for rogue decks in design. Also eternal means sometimes an ancient card becomes playable cause interactions. I think Nibiru (destroying 5 monsters cause summoning) cannot exist in MTG, This is how YGO deals with power creep
@@funa. Trident Dragion went from being a $5 card no one played and only had one reprint (and nothing since 2014) to shooting up to $100 because of Tenpai Dragons, a deck that specialized in summoning FIRE dragon synchro monsters (and back down to $6 after getting a reprint this fall). Stuff like this happens all the time. And it's funny...most Yugioh! rogue decks are simply 2-3 years behind the power curve of the game. My Marincess deck from 2022 (a Tier 2/rogue deck after getting legacy support for its 2019 debut) would have been on-par with anything from 2019, and dominated almost anything released prior). Most Yugioh hand traps can't exist in Magic. The reason they're good is because they're free and you can use them on Turn 0, and almost everything in Yugioh is generic (I don't need to play FIRE/zombies to drop an Ash Blossom), so it's all modular and their effects stop core parts of the game.
A Dead by Daylight dev said it best: If your community is complaining, that means they care. If they go silent, you should be worried. (paraphrasing ofc)
@@the_step_dan323 I would have said the Fortnite of Card games, but at least the out of universe additions to Fortnite don't shatter it's core functionality and aren't effectively mandatory...
Commander becoming the de facto new Standard format means they need to keep shoveling out more and more and stronger and stronger cards to keep people buying cards. Standard as the standard means people are tweaking their decks every few months and building a new deck every few years. Powercreep in eternal formats means you need to keep buying every single set.
i guess, too fast releases was not planned in the 3 year set rotation. Also not sure if there are counterspells for too strong cards, which would work in eternal format with (a more)lack of ban lists.
Play... a different... game. Take up a different hobby even. We saw this in Yu-Gi-Oh BTW. There's no rotation in YU-Gi-Oh, power creep became a big problem, (and people hated Pendulums and Link Summoning) so the players just created their own vintage format. And the best part of playing with exclusively the older cards is you don't have to give the company any new money. The very fact that this is a discussion being had is evidence that the new paradigm isn't as monolithic as it may seem at a glance.
I mean, we've seen what happens with 'vote with your wallet' with video games. Those people who actually can 'not buy' the things with issues because of their self control will eventually run out of things to buy. The whales and people who don't give a damn about the overall health of the game, or the playerbase, just consume.
I don’t know about you but my transition to indie video games has made my video game experience much better than the AAA games this last decade. Magic is simply about to give me that same feeling when I switch to flesh and blood or sorcery or whatever.
What does it even mean to run out of things to buy? You don't need video games to live. If you find it difficult to avoid buying video games, seek therapy immediately. Also, our wallets voted Concord into oblivion, for just one easy example.
@@innocentsmith6091 What I mean about running out of things to buy is how swiftly full priced games have 'microtransactions' that are the price of indie games have risen. The amount of day 1 DLCs and 'pay for convenience' transactions. There was an outcry against that, where a lot of people were railing against it. Despite that though, people were buying these games. Our wallets didn't vote Concord into oblivion, their marketing department did. Also a counterpoint, Fortnite did exactly what people are accusing MtG of doing, and it's _still_ making stupid amounts of money despite every discussion around it being degrading towards the game, and having all but one of my playgroup just moving on.
After 30+ years, Wizards hasn't learned that the MtG community is an ecosystem, not a buffet. Everything will inevitably affect everyone until everyone decides to leave.
Wizards have learned that Universes Beyond bring new players that buy more and make more money than the veterans. They didn't decided to make half of Magic sets universes beyond because they love spending money on license and angering their players. They did it, because these products have excellent sales. Wizards is hold by Hasbro, that has only one objective: money. If making money means disgruntling some of their older players, they will do it ^^
Feels good to have someone like Red actually talking about these problems with MTG. As someone who grew up with it, playing shitty piles of kamigawa, lorywyn and whatever else I could get my hands on, it sucks to see what MTG is now. I took a long break from the game, thinking it just wasn't my thing anymore. But I've come to realize I really do love MTG. I love the game, most of the mechanics, the unique and interesting worlds they used to have, the old art. Getting back into MTG and looking at the massive amount of products, and just being disappointed with what they've done story and lore wise. I've felt like a crazy person seeing everyone else eat it up lmao. Thanks Red.
"If you don't like it, don't buy it" is exactly the reason why I haven't bought any MTG product in about 8 years despite formerly being a massive collector
Yeah, that's both positive for you and also the thought of it kinda makes me sad. Like, I suspect I'm on the same track as you, but I like the game and I don't want to have to give it up. You know?
I played from 4. Edition till Mirrodin and somehow got sucked in again when the Dominaria United story started (and I realized how much some of my old cards are worth now). And sometimes I wonder if it's my fault that everything when to shit faster and faster since then, cause I seem to have a talent to pick the exact worst moment to get into something, be it stocks or cryptocurrency, before it collapses. Sorry, I guess -_-
Magic is a game that revolves around knowing what cards exist in a format, what your opponent is playing, what they could be playing, and when they do play a card exactly how the nuances of the rules in this context so you can either play around it, or understand the context of what will happen when a card resolves. Magic is about proactively thinking about what cards you're likely to see and play against when you go to the local gamestore, or a tournament, play or your local playgroup, and how to pre-emptively design your deck to both interact favourably against what they could do and/or not just be completely stone-walled by something they could do. Magic is about reactively thinking about past games, and flaws in your deck designs and how you can change them to better position themselves to win, or have more fun in the attempt. But in order to do any of these you need to be acutely aware of every or almost every card available to both you and your opponents, and how the rules interact with them. You can't just turn up, pretend they don't exist and play (or at least do so and intend to win and/or have more fun than just playing solitaire). P.S. I lost my first modern game on turn 2 to a card I didn't know existed, played in a way that I couldn't predict with my 10 years of magic experience (cycle Street Wraith for 2 life). I can't even fathom how many such unknown cards and interactions will exist if I "skip the parts of magic that aren't for me".
That may have been the kind of game MtG used to be, but it fundament is no longer a game of understanding interactions and knowing the card pool. Now days it's a wacky carnival of effects where players race to have their deck "Do its thing" before ultimately crumbling to its lack of strategy and cohesion. It is a circus, a joke, and a crying shame.
I'm glad I distanced myself from MtG a while ago. I don't know how poorly I'd be handling the news that Cloud Strife will be Standard legal if I was still playing.
@@chloeann55 I mean, yeah, and Spider-man fan absolutely do that? Like, how many Spider-man fan do you know that feels obligated to watch the current Spider-Man cartoon for toddlers or read the Spider-Man promotionnal comic from OfficeMax?
@ I was more ok with it when it was secret lairs but having a full standard set is equivalent to the spiderman franchise crossing over with scoobydoo for their newest big budget box office film
The vast majority of Secret Lairs and UB did used to be quite avoidable outside of Commander. Likewise a Standard grinder could ignore Modern Horizon sets entirely. The new 50/50 IP split all in Standard (and therefore all eternal formats) is beyond the pale but the phrase "this product isn't for you" used to have some meaning.
I don't like it and I don't buy it, doesn't change the fact that every week I need to sit in a commander pod where we have Warhammer 40k Necrons vs The Eleventh Doctor vs Fallout Mutants.
Well, clearly it's not that offensive to you, since you go each week anyway. If it was as bad as your whining makes it out to be, then you'd either, find another pod that aligns with your views, or stop playing. But you're enduring it, so it's clearly not bad enough for you to do anything more than whine in youtube comments about it.
@@skelskeleton But you don't seem to dislike it enough to make you stop playing. It's clearly not even enough for you to find a group of people who match with your opinions that you all agree to not play those decks. You're still going to the same games and acting like you expect things to change. News flash, they won't change because sitting around bitching about it isn't actually doing anything to enact change. All I see are people sitting around pissing and moaning, but none seem actually prepared to make any form of personal sacrifice or any effort at all to do anything that would facilitate change.
Another aspect of the product overload that I think bears consideration is that the increased pace of releases has meant that product becomes quickly unavailable once release has passed. When Lost Caverns of Ixalan dropped I was keen on the merfolk commander deck, but had other bills and costs to pay for so couldn’t preorder or buy on release. When I was in a place where I had a bit of money free for magic I couldn’t find a copy of that deck even on the secondary market. I could still find sealed Ikoria commander decks in some game stores or on secondary resellers almost 4 years after that set released but could find a commander deck for a set that released a year ago. And maybe this is a country specific thing, I’m based in New Zealand but my experience in the last year of magic especially has been that the constant release schedule means that the print run for sets is smaller or stores are ordered less and if you don’t get in when a set releases, then you miss out, which sucks when this uptick in releases coincides with an economic downturn that means i need to be more deliberate about how and when I spent money.
It's even worse for some of their "premium" sets where a store will maybe only get 1 or 2 of them in total. You're right, and this all leads into accessibility. It all feeds into the next issue
In theory that would be where the T in TCG comes to bear: instead of buying the decks at release, you could always build them later, buying the singles or trading for them. That is, if you are lucky and the deck you are trying to copy didn't have any chase cards in them, which is usually the reason why they sell so fast in the first place. For me, all the little feel-bads have now reached the point where I opted out of Constructed. I'll keep a bit of Jumpstart around for friends when they visit, and play pre-releases of sets that look good. But that's about it.
The problem with keeping the printers running all the time is that they're virtually never available for reprints. I remember thinking of that when people were struggling to get the Warhammer 40K decks and it's only gotten worse since then.
My play group all agreed that we're not going to use UB stuff except Lord of the Rings, and we already play with price limits on our decks so most of this stuff will straight up not hit our table. But next year, that means we won't even be able to go to the prereleases. I loved the prereleases. I loved getting immersed in and excited for a setting, learning how this set plays. And now there is 1 (One) singular set that's coming out next year that is interesting to me.
The problem for me (and many others) is that I DON'T have a playgroup like this. I primarily play Magic during game nights at the game store. So I'm forced to interact with all these cards even if I don't want to and wouldn't buy them myself. It really sucks.
I was so excited to buy collector packs of final fantasy to maybe finally get into commander instead of standard, not to be forced to play them in standard. Standard is already too damn expensive and UB makes it even worse
Same with draft. Most stores only draft the most recent standard set, which means in 2025 there could be as few as 7 weeks during which I can draft a fun set without having to organise my own pod, since Aetherdrift and Star Wars are functionally UB too.
2:55 I don't play magic now, but back 20-25 years ago when i was casually playing with my friends, having that momentous occasion where the expansion set comes out every few months drummed up a lot of excitement and discussions as everyone was looking forward to the same thing. Now that seems like its lost.
Welcome to my brand new magic format: universes within. This is a new type of *meta* format that gets added onto any other format where all cards featuring outside IP, and any secret lair exclusives are added to the existing banlist for the chosen format.
@RedBobcatGames considering they are actually in universe cards probably not. Even then banning non secret lair universe beyond cards is extremely elitist as I have heard signifinat portion of commander players use the universe beyond precons.
There're 2 points I would like to make: 1. We're a small fraction of MTG playerbase, our complaints will almost certainly fall short behind *sales*. 2. I've personally come to terms with the fact that my opinion (my bottom line if you will) won't matter. Whenever I see someone complaining to MaRo (I used to do it even), he usually pulls out their famous Market Research, which is something we can't argue against. As Rhystic Studies elegantly puts it: "we were lectured about invisible people who care about Magic beyond our little internet bubbles. The gas burns brightest from street lamps just above your wary head." The game needs new blood, and selling cardboard Funko Pops seems to be the chosen way. Old players' opinions (legitimate or not) won't be taken into consideration.
I don't believe a word out of MaRo's lying snake mouth. Dude's a stooge through and through and the sooner people realize he's soulless flesh automaton the better.
tbh i dont think UB actual gets more players, it just get more money out of existing players who are fans of that material, thats why LOTR sold well, bc the mtg and LOTR fanbase overlapped alot alread
@@the_step_dan323 no I think it gets a lot of new customers buying cards as the main driver of growth, but I doubt it actually gets a lot of new PLAYERS. They probably just buy it to look at their favorite characters and references to whatever IP they are into, maybe try and play a game or two, and it goes straight on the collection shelf forever.
Honestly I was fine seeing 1-2 cards from a UB secret lair(my main “Don’t like it”) every now and then, but the fact by the end of this year someone could sit across from me with an entire commander deck(or almost guaranteed, standard) entirely of cards not from the MtG Universe and function synergistically really gets to me.
The only occasion that I use this kind of argument is when one of my, non-competetive playing, buddies is caught up in company and social media induced FOMO again. So it's less of "stop criticizing" and more in a "you don't need to sell a kidney to have the newest cool shite, the things you have are working perfectly fine" kind of way.
So many people use the "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" line for everything, not just card games. Often coupled with other clichés like "let people enjoy things". But the second something they don't like is announced, THEIR criticism is important and" valid", and we all need to listen and discuss it. Agree or disagree with others criticisms, they should be allowed to make their case without being so casually dismissed. You can evaluate the validity of their claims, and sometimes criticism is genuinely nonsensical or not applicable. But we can't keep dismissing things off hands under the guise of "positivity" or "community" or whatever buzzword is justifying the latest corporate decision. Let people hate things.
I feel the same way. Honestly not sure what I'll do at that point. Like I said in the vid, you can't not engage with a set without really quitting the game totally
Just seems to me like they are trying to fleece addicted people of all their money. Along with tricking unknowing people of other fandoms into buying fomo products for way too much of what it actually cost to produce. It's pretty disgusting.
"Don't like it, don't buy it" doesn't mean shit when investors and whales make up the majority of purchases. Lord of the Rings isn't the most cracked set because it's the most fun or well designed. It's because investors stand to make the most money.
@@KILOBify it was never going to be an immediate process showing instant results just because you skip a set or two. It's a long process of snowballing. Eventually the whales will be left with no one left to play with, and they'll move on themselves, and Hasbro is left holding the bag. You have to hold firm and keep saying "nuh uh," even if it means you stop being able to play competitively, or your playgroup starts getting smaller. If you don't like the direction MTG is going in, stop paying for it. Full stop. No one booster here or there, no pre-releases, nothing. It sucks, but it's the only way to make "don't like it, don't buy it" actually work.
Do you think epilogue boosters got cancelled because of backlash or because people didn't buy them? I figured the most effective way to cut down all this extraneous stuff is to organize boycotts but it seems Magic influencers don't ever bring up ideas like that.
Well it all goes hand in hand. Boycotts don't tend to work but marketing, both positive and negative can have a massive effect on whether people buy a set or not, which in turn affects sales numbers
@ I beg to differ. People have been trying to boycott Secret Lairs/Universes Beyond for a long time, and they were still sold out. There is a reason we don’t have epilogue boosters anymore, but we do still have Universes Beyond/ Secret Lairs.
@@definitelynotmany4972 yeah, w/o scalpers life would be better or if they printed Secret Lairs to demand like before, then their sales would reflect actual interest (or be more accurate)
Influencers leaving the game doesn't typically lead to much more than their influence being severely reduced. See Reynad, Lifecoach, and plenty of other streamer influencers, versus the less influential people who stuck around through bad design choices, blocks, and standard eras. CGB, TCC, etc are all pretty vocal about not loving the new releases schedules... but not interacting with them will hurt them as creators significantly more than it will hurt the company. A mass movement might, but it is still a pyrrhic victory.
With everything that's been going on in the last few months, and realizing that I only play commander/ non-competitive, I've decided to hang up my wallet. Proxies forevermore
The slippery slope is an informal fallacy, there can be times where there is one (a business seeing something makes them money and does that thing more) and times where there isn't (gay marriage will lead to marriage between people and dogs for an example that is very much not true)
@@winter945People have litterally tried to use arguments used for gay marriage to support pedophilia. The slippery slope is, in theory, a tool for showing why an argument is flawed("if that's your basis, it can also support this"), not a prediction of the future or even necessarily an argument against something. I've pointed to both pro and anti abortion arguments as being victim to slippery slope because they were poorly constructed, for example. The problem is that people try to use slippery slope as objection and not warning. If I tell you you've stood on a slippery slope, I am not saying you're going to inevitably slide- I'm telling you to set your feet and guard against it.
@winter945 Reducto ad absurdum does not make the slippery slope a fallacy. The entire point of an argument is to illuminate reality and consider logical consequences before they happen. If you take the brakes off a parked car on an incline, it will slide downhill, which, regardless of what it might crash into, is a risk to yourself and others. Calling that a slippery slope argument is to ignore the reality of gravity.
I only started in Brothers War and quickly moved to Commander as my main play. When I heard the sentiment "Not every product is for you" sentiment from Wizards my first thought was "Bullshit". Their most popular format is basically all sets legal with 4 players, who DOESNT get affected? This idiotic statement serves them 2 purposes: the first being a distraction from the release schedule and power creep engine, the second being a reassurance to the whales they will keep delivering.
We're stuck dealing with a culture full of vacuously skulled consumers that are so without any meaningful sense of taste that every possible version of a product is equal to them. And at that point I see no reason not to simply impose my preferred version of things on them. They clearly cannot tell the difference anyway, I couldn't cause them harm if I wished to!
That sounds like the "seatbelts in cars" argument. As long as it's for their betterment, sometimes people do need to be told what to do. VERY thin line there of course, so can be dangerous ground
I ended up playing against an Iron Man EDH deck the other day and I was not happy having to interact with it. The only way to avoid it would be to stop playing, but I don't want to do that. Universes Beyond was a mistake that will never be fixed because it *sells*
@@CyrusdVulture Only until you get rule 0'd instead. If everyone plays with UB cards because they help their subpar commander perform better then slowly less and less people will want to agree to not run any. Especially with whole sets of new cards being entirely UB with no UW alternative. "No cards from the last 2 sets" is suddenly a much bigger ask than not running the cards from the walking dead secret lair.
Magic has turned into an investment opportunity as much, if not more than it is a game these days. It doesn’t matter if the normal folks say they don’t like the direction of the product when there are people buying pallets of every product just to hold onto them for resale in a decade.
"dont like it dont play/buy it" people also tend to be the loudest anti-proxy people as well. so the biggest alternative to wasting money on things you either dont like or cannot afford also will trigger a salt response from them.
I'm already in that boat. It's not often I get anything sealed for Magic. I usually get singles, and I basically get sealed products if there is a specific reason to get it.
Buying the singles still motivates resellers to buy the boxes in bulk to get the singles. Proxies are the way to vote with your dollar. Saves you money, doesn’t stimulate the magic economy, lets you use the cards.
You already make great videos, but this is your most well thought out and best video!! I'm sure I've said *those words* at some point, but you've genuinely made me think about this, and I'll do my best to not ever say them again at least in this context. I think there are other things that don't relate to consumerism that it is perfectly reasonable to say an equivalent to "then just don't buy it", and actually should have an equivalent of *those words* said, but I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to fans of a product voicing their concerns. Thanks, and great work!
No worries, and thank you. And of course you're right. I focused on one instance of saying "Just don't buy it" here, but there will always be times when that's good advice. I've probably said it myself more than once. In fact I think that was my suggestion around Value Boosters
Yeah, I knew I was bringing some spice here. I don't want to upset people, but I also knew what I was getting into. I just hate how often I'm seeing people try to silence criticism, you know?
The mentality of "don't like it? don't buy/watch it" is one I don't always get, and it's usually something commonly said by people that likely have room temperature IQ, because they can't handle the thought of anyone having criticisms about a product they found to be flawed. This isn't always the case, but more often than not, this kind of mentality is common with those kinds of people. It's not something you can just say to someone half the time to magically dispel all criticisms regarding a certain thing, because it implies that the fella with said criticisms isn't a fan of said thing to begin with, when it's more likely that they are, and they care enough to warrant making a point to begin with, because they're not pleased with where subject thing is headed, or what it's doing. And sometimes, that kind of mentality makes little sense as well. For example, imagine telling a Star Wars enjoyer that thought the Sequel Trilogy was shite, that the Sequel Trilogy was not for them. So if it wasn't for fucking STAR WARS FANS, then who was it for? This is a question they won't answer because more than likely, they don't know the answer to it. There's some good exceptions though, like voting with your wallet and choosing to not support certain things financially altogether, in a form of protest. For example, I gave up on Activision Blizzard games after coming to the realisation that they are not getting any better anytime soon. I stopped enjoying their products, so I stopped buying them altogether. The same can be said for MTG. There's a lot of stuff they're putting out that I just don't like, or isn't for me personally, so I don't buy into it. But when they do come out with something worth my time, like Foundations, I'm more than willing to buy it, because I actually care about it. Hilariously, some of the same people that would tell you that a product was not made for you, will probably eventually regret that decision when someone decides "good idea, I won't support the thing." I've seen examples of this, and it's just funny to watch. It's a really weird mentality that I just don't fully understand quite yet, and probably never will. But I think it's safe to say that I've not often seen these words specifically used for anything meaningful, other than just telling some guy his thoughts are invalid and that he should shut up, which is not exactly helpful nor insightful. I know it's slightly off topic from MTG, but this thing is rather universial and isn't just present in MTG discourse. It's fucking everywhere, and it's annoying.
It's worse than that tbh. It's the clarion call of the consoomer. They genuinely don't understand that you might love and care about something but do so because of what it is and not because of what it's called. It's why star wars fans were lambasted for critiquing nu wars, for example. Some people simply can't grasp that a thing is more than the label on the tin.
Slightly off topic also, but Star Wars lost me when Disney decided the expanded universe wasn't canon anymore, because honestly Knights of the Old Republic was the best Star Wars media going
@@RedBobcatGames I'm more of a casual fan in that regard, so can't speak too much on that, but I do agree they did the EU a bit dirty, especially when they bring some characters out from there, just to do them dirty. I will never forgive them for what they did to Scorch. Absolutely wasted the guy. Never played Republic Commando, but from what I understand of those games, yeah, I see why fans were pissed.
I remember when the phrase "This product isn't for you" was offense to me. Then I realized Rosewater was right, as the years have passed. Who am I to facilitate a parasitic relationship with a company that prints pieces of cardboard? To them, I'm just a number, same as if I were an employee. To expect this billion-dollar property to capitulate to my desires and concerns, based off the fact I've been their customer for 20 years, is simply delusional, if not ludicrous. In fact, Wizards should NOT be trying to satisfy me or people my age. WOTC needs to sell their game to a brand-new generation of players, to ensure another 20 years of customers. To be a gamer in this age is to also be entitled. To let go of that entitlement, and instead enjoy the product for what it is will truly set you free from the paradox that is being a gaming customer.
Oh I don't know. I see where you're coming from, but I feel there's more to it than that. If we're talking gaming a whole, this "new generation" have had things like microtransactiosn, DLCs and Lootboxes normalized for them. That's in part why I suspect corportations want to focus on them as their main / only customers, as they can make more money from them. But I'd happily say those things are anti-consumer and objectively bad. Things literally DID used to be better, and yes I think its fair to try and get a company to adopt older ways of doing business.
@RedBobcatGames"The new generation is used to lootboxes unlike us enlightened millennials who were addicted to spending money on MTG packs which are are certainly not the original lootboxes or anything. Actually wild that you can live on your high horse thinking like that while being so blind to see the dissonance to it.
@RedBobcatGames I agree, things did used to be better. While kids these days have to deals with MTX, DLC, and Lootboxes, we also have been dealing with them for the better part of twenty years. That's where we are in this day and age, and what's going to happen twenty years from now will be even more anti-consumer. But that's the trade. If you want to consume, you have to pay the price. And if we're criticizing MTX and Lootboxes, Magic was the first game to do it. The entire industry has adapted to WOTC's very intuitive business model over the last thirty years. So much so, that Dr. Garfield himself made that wary post about a decade ago, warning against the rise of Skinner models, that also served as a shot towards WOTC. Nothing has changed for the better since then, whether its in Magic, or the gaming industry.
I have essentially stopped buying Magic product, with rare exceptions of old booster packs for chaos commander draft fun and even more rarely singles (and often proxies at that) for my commander decks which I have almost entirely stopped upgrading. I am going to start selling off my high value old cards after I move later this month because I don’t trust that reserve list won’t get messed up eventually. M30 was the first pass.
Sure, but part of why no one bought them was because of the talk around them. Marketing works, that's why companies pay reviewers for positive reviews. Critisism of a bad product works the same in reverse. If it didn't we wouldn't have the advertising industry
“This product isn’t for you. Only interact with the sets that you like” “on an unrelated note, we’re making less and less products for you. Don’t interact with the sets that aren’t for you.”
For the most part, I've stopped interacting with the product that isn't for me. Which means, I currently play Balatro, Slay the Spire, and every so often dominion, but not MTG any more. And for that matter, I've found that I quite like not having about 40% of games decided by mana issues on either side.
I'm sorry my bobcat friend, but you and everybody else seem to have missed a very important point here. Just because it's "not for you" - probably for financial reasons (cos hey the good cards are printed on a more expensive cardboard) - that does not mean you can ignore these cards when you find yourself playing against them on a game of commander. WOTC are ruthlessly exploiting pay to win where they can to the detriment of the game. It's not for you. Is their attempt to brainwash you in to accepting their monetisation of what was once a beautiful game.
I'm not a fan of Universes Beyond, but that didn't stop me from sitting down at a commander table at my LGS with my Universes Beyond free deck facing Optimus Prime, Doctor Who, and Jeff Goldblum from Jurrassic Park and those were just the commanders. These are all characters I love in their own IPs, but I don't want to see them in my Magic game...
I like how Aaron Foresythe gets introduced to a new format and the first deck he builds has armageddon in it and he doesn't understand why that's a problem.
might explain why every format is kind of miserable to play at this point. And it's definitely not Armageddon as a card but the whole design mentality of not letting others play the game against you and close the door as fast as possible seems to definitely be a thing they design for lately. Like aggro being able to beat you on t2-3 in standard is just stupid and bad design.
What if I DO like it, but WOTC fuxed up and made it too expensive or limited to be available? I liked 30th Ed, would have bought it if it weren't 250 a pack.
Do NOT. even joke about that. Until it stops being a brain-fart of a Stinky Twit and becomes yet another facet of our horrifying reality, do NOT. JOKE. ABOUT. THAT.
True, but even then I'd say only if there's still some value in the non-premium versions too. Early days, but it looks like maybe WotC are ONLY putting the spice in collector boosters now, and that's not a great idea because either because you don't want Play Boosters to have nothing extra at all
I started playing Magic in year 3, so I've seen a lot of change. The game has generally gotten better over time, so I'm open minded to changes now (I wasn't when I was younger). After the last few years, all my friends who play have basically dipped because they can't keep up. As a result, I now play Brawl by myself, and I've built a cube to play with my friends on those rare occasions they don't want to play a board game instead. I went from spending several hundred or even a couple thousand a year on the game to buying a few singles to add to the cube.
The challenge is that I play the cards for the rules that are written on them so if its an IP I think is ridiculous BUT it works in the deck because of its rules I might throw a "Insert Silly Yellow Sponge IP" into my deck as a result. So I may heavily dislike the silly IP (art,etc) but I'll still buy/play the card for its rules. 2:40 - The LOTR release felt like this because it seemed to stay around for awhile...... Bloomborrow could have been WotC's longer term set and given time to breath with its nifty setting BUT they were in too much of a hurry to replace it, then replace the thing that replaced it.
Yeah, completelty. And also I imagine most players are like yourself in that they're not that interested in the IP of the card. But for someone like me that's such a shame, because Magic's lore could be so good! I wish they'd put more focus on it, so that maybe more people actually would start to care
This why i love KeyForge a little bit more every day. You can buy as many or few decks as you want to play. Now yes, if you don't want to play Grim Reminders, you don’t have to buy any. True your opponent might bring a deck of it to a tournament. But there's also enough tournament formats out there you can mitigate that too.
@@RedBobcatGames it came back! It's latest expansion is crowdfunding right now in fact. LMK if you'd ever like to talk more about it. (we can even do some games online) But they've also done the equivalent of "un" sets (special decks) which are not tournament legal, so it's like... a rule zero all the time. "We doing something unhinged or something sensible? Super power decks or medium? Dud deck switch? etc"
The modern criticism at 5:11 is spot-on. That's why I liked and played modern, with an off-meta deck that's barely changed in about 10 years, and now I can't - because it's now essentially a rotating format, since MH 1-2-3 and LotR. It felt atrocious, seeing how my strong, fair deck that I've worked on for years was just power crept out of existence. Nadu wasn't even the main issue; MTG used to be, for me, about the joy of discovering how to connect different cards into synergy. Seeing how I can take a normal card, meant for standard, and find a cool use for it when combining it with cards in Modern or Commander. But if they make sets for Modern and Commander, then what's the point? That fun is dead. They killed it.
They said recently that they want to stop printing cards into modern, and so instead of making a modern masters set each year they're going to print 3 modern legal UB sets instead... yay? Problem somehow solved?
@@RedBobcatGames @RedBobcatGames Unless they undo several years of horrible treatment, I don't foresee modern ever going back to its days of glory. But at least they recognize the problem, a few years too late.
The most obvious problem with this argument is that even if I don't buy it my opponent could buy it and I'm at a disadvantage or engaging with product I don't like. The other argument I suscribe more to is that even if I don't buy it it influences the product I do buy, I'm a standard player and don't touch commander, several standard sets like Outlaws have a ton of janky multicolored legends, commander design philosophy is bleeding into other formats (remember Nadu) so I can't just ignore it, is also affecting my format.
The one nice thing about only buying the sets I like is that I save a lot of money. But as has been said, it really only works if you exclusively play draft / precons and don't engage with players "in the wild" that don't do the same thing. Luckily, I have a playgroup that works well because we share roughly similar preferences (except for the one guy who insisted we draft our way through four Duskmourn boxes...) and for when we get bored with the current cards, there are other boardgames. It does seem silly for a company to suggest this, but I suspect in the short term, milking the whales is simply a better business strategy than "let's make four good sets a year and regularly reprint the staples"... And then in a few years, when that stops working, they can do some kind of "back to the roots" relaunch and reset the power creep for a while. I would be fine with a nice three set block per year, ideally set in a world we already know, and then one set for trolling about or doing the crossover stuff. For next year, Dragonstorm is the only set that looks remotely interesting, especially with Innistrad being reprints only.
A few years ago I was one of the target audience who was brought into MTG commander because of the Tyranid Warhammer 40k deck. I now fully understand why players say some products are just too much.
I agree. If you don't like the SpongeBob secret lair, don't buy it. If you don't like UB sets, don't buy them. Magic players talk about buying sealed product like they're being forced to and it's so weird.
The irony is that the people who proudly parrot "this product isn't for you" are acting like they won't end up feeling the same in short order. There's nothing wrong with playing outside the box to attract new players, but WotC decided to sell its identity for new money, and sold the older player base too in the process. They have no loyalty, and they deserve none. To endorse the "don't like it don't buy it" line is to endorse your own planned obsolescence.
Hard agree with all this. I read in a book one time that a pasta company was trying to find the "best" sauce and there are actually ~5 depending on personal taste. I feel the "no like, no buy" advice works for pasta sauce (and draft/sealed environments) but not for constructed MtG. Unlike pasta sauce, you can't pick it off the shelf and play with it as-is in a constructed format. Every card introduced into a format may be relevant to the larger format. Even if not intended (Ahem, Nadu). There's also a problem for WOTC in that they've created all these ancillary products like LOTR and Assassin's Creed to pull in new players. WOTC wants those new players to take up EDH, Modern, Standard, and Pauper to keep them coming back and buying more cards. To that end, WOTC can't afford to section off UB from constructed formats, and they're even incentivized to make at least a few cards from each IP impactful enough to be regularly played. *sigh* Aside: I appreciate MaRo, but from what I've read of his work, he spends most of his time playing new draft environments. So, he's not the best spokesperson when it comes to understanding constructed woes.
If UB proves to be more successful than the baseline product, there's no particular logic that favors shirking it in favor of the original design. From a financial standpoint, you're replacing one product with a nearly-identical one which outsells it dramatically. 'Health of the game' depends on some proverbial tipping point, as design quality (and, frankly, art & story quality) were in seemingly-terminal decline well before UB released, and even then year after year the game was more popular than ever before. The idea is always that there's some fulcrum after which the game will crash and be abandoned - which isn't this one, wasn't this one, wasn't that one. The unfortunate reality is that when the mass-consumer-populace discovers your enjoyable IP or product, your best hope is that it never gets another entry. Because what's going to come out is going to be something designed for a fundamentally different, fundamentally easier-to-please audience. It happens in almost every medium, and in a way it requires a creative process almost wholly-insulated from consumer sentiment to avoid. Which very obviously is not modern Magic, much less Wizards.
People always talk about "the health of the game" in terms of profit growth, as if that isn't exactly how one would measure the health of a tumour. More players and more money makes MTG worse - as the years keep proving. The tipping point is not "when MTG will stop living", it's "when all that's left living in MTG is the sickness".
Yeah, you're not wrong. Though I think about how much WotC are paying out in licensing fees, and have to wonder how much of that could have been spent on full time writers and world builders
@@yurisei6732 Well, yes, you would measure health of a franchise in terms of how much money it brings in if you need to pay a large staff of people earning well above the median wage alongside significant benefits. If my playerbase is growing, and they are spending more, why would I have any reason to care that some slice of the playerbase doesn't like the new tone? That's why it's important to learn to let go, unless you like rolling boulders up cliffsides. This is hardly the first game/IP to drink from the cursed chalice of consumerism. If you aren't having fun, why bother?
@@RedBobcatGames The trouble is that the licensing fees out-earn hiring on more staff and probably involve less headache. When Hasbro/WOTC started layoffs after the interest rate hike in '22 (like most overstaffed-industries that loaded up on debt), there was a furor about it without much return. For all the kicking and screaming about Spongebob, it's probably going to sell out and more than make up for that initial cost. The trouble, which is too boring for most people to stomach, is that this industry has so loaded itself up on bad debt and bad bets that it now has to prioritize the nigh-endless capital streams from consumerists over its original core and dedicated playerbase in order to stay afloat, and there really is no other avenue to address it. It's a pretty mundane story in the world of entertainment, really.
@@bartoffer "The tumour is growing, and the tumour is OK with that, so you should let go". Of course the tumour is OK with growing. I don't respect the insinuation that I should be happy about cancer.
I think it's quite frankly insane for anyone in charge at a company to say "perhaps this product isn't for you". Perhaps my money just isn't for you! Wizards seems to be stuck in the mindset of "we'd rather have one person spend a hundred dollars rather than have two hundred people spend one dollar", a real "but steel is heavier than feathers" mindset. Your products _should_ be for everyone because that inevitably makes you more money than if you were to make hyper-specific products only for niche groups of people! Every customer who can buy your product is a die roll, and why roll one big die when you can roll multiple smaller ones? The odds are so much better on the second one, even if the first one _could_ possibly net a higher number!
The simplest counter to "this product isn't for you" is a sports analogy, imo. Actually, this is exactly what is happening in the sport I used to compete in, powerlifting. People keep inventing more supportive (i.e. more kilos-adding) equipment (think elastic suits, the term "elastic" being a bit of a stretch here bc we're talking about literal canvas), more flexible barbells and the like to lift more weight without actually getting stronger. When it comes to equipment, that's a personal and quite a huge investment. Luckily, we have the divisions of equipped and unequipped ("RAW") separated but you can easily see how adding in something entirely new that makes some people better and not others (those who go to a different competition) is an issue in a competitive setting. We don't have one deadlift world record for the open weight division now. We kinda have half a dozen of them (multi-ply, single-ply, deadlift bar, kabuki bar, an actual stiff bar, RAW, different combinations of equipment and bars and even, though from another sport, the strongman deadlift record(s)) and people aren't keeping track of (most of) them separately. You can't really opt out. And in MTG, you're not competing in the record books, you're competing (playing) in different formats or even just the kitchen table. If you don't like what is happening to MTG and how the game (not your deck, the game) is changing, you're just sh*t out of luck. Either don't play or accept you'll play the game in a way you probably won't like. It's not a LEGO set or a single player game, it's a competitive thing at its core.
Yeah you're right. Though I like to hope that we're totally shit out of luck. WotC have proven that they occasionally listen to the player base, so I'd like to think that complainig actually might have a positive effect on the game, even if it's only a slim chance
This toxic positivity around products is getting out of control. Nobody can say anything, no matter how valid, without being attacked. Thank you for adding your voice to the protest.
External ip bloat is like stage 1 of enshittification of an ip. Its outright saying "we dont care about our dedicated internal audience, we want to instead draw in an external audience: all the mindless consoomer whales from these other ips who will buy everything that has spongebob/spiderman/whatever on it" Then, from there marketing shifts towards trying to retain whales which means preserving and expanding the reasons they joined. I fully expect the standard rotation period to get longer and longer to prevent all these universe beyond sets from becoming illegal and many universes beyond cards will escape from being banned when they really should be. there is also a secondary audience of powergamers who are similar who dont care for the health of the game but gaining and retaining access to the strongest cards of every set and a tertiary audience of speculators who inflate the apparent popularity of sets by buying packs and selling desired cards to these two previous groups. These three groups combined are terrible for the health of the game when they grow to too significant numbers. If i am playing my silly little bloomburrow squirrel deck i dont want to keep running into decks massively beyond its power level: powergamer decks whos theme is "i win on turn 1 if i have any of these cards from these new sets". I also dont want to be seeing universes beyond, the juxtaposition is jarring regardless of personal feelings on universes beyond (and those feelings are negative). Finally, the speculators dont really even play mtg anyways and are just enablers of the first two! Final word, power level discrepancy is why mtg arena is so cancerous. Mtg arena being the most accessible way to play mtg online essentially disenfranchises individuals of the power to decide who to and not to play against and which cards should or shouldnt be allowed because you are forced to play by whatever WOTC rules on there. Everyone is incentivized to play the strongest stuff possible to fight over the crumbs of free cards and packs the game feeds you. There is no social or casual mode where you can sit with someone else and they say "hey, my deck isnt very good," and you respond "oh, no worries. I will use one of my weaker decks then" Edit: apparently i just ended up typing basically the same 5th paragraph twice, wrote this over a few hours on and off so i guess i just forgot i had already said what i had said. the redundant paragraph was removed
I feel like serialized cards is evidence of what you said as well. And as long as Hasbro are making money they won't care, even if it ruins the game in the long run
Not wanting to buy a product of a game you otherwise tremendously enjoy IS the problem, not the solution. Secret layers and other smaller side things like that don't matter so much in that regard, as they are indeed easy and painless skips for all of those except the specific type of person they are for, but it does still contribute to the overload problem for those who want or need to stay on top of every new card or product for one reason or another. However, when looking forward to a year with standard set after standard set that you just don't want to interact with, despite your head-over-heels love of magic otherwise, yeah, that's when not wanting to buy a product becomes THE problem, even for those who just wish to play kitchen table magic.
I hadn't thought about the line between "not wanting to play against X" and "X becoming banned" being related to things besides game mechanics. It's a very interesting line of thought, glad you brought it up. Leyline of Resonance got banned in BO1 Standard because it's unfun, well it's unfun having to deal with Marvel shit.
I have a friend who told me "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" when I complained about the constant product overload. So I took his advice. Now he complains that my decks are boring because I haven't bought any new cards for almost 3 years lol.
Based. 👍
Haha, that's the way to go it seems
this is literally what i did too. havent bough crad since the set explosion 2021
I did the same thing.
A "friend"
'vote with your wallet' doesn't work when whaley mchwaleinson's vote counts ten thousand times what mine does
welcome to capitalism, where "vote with your wallet" was long ago decided as the fairest kind of democracy...by the people with the biggest wallets
Whaley Mchwaleinson won't enjoy the game so much when nobody else is still playing.
Yours definitely still counts.
@maxscherzer9521 it's such a shame wizards listens to him over 10000 people like me
So stop voting with your time.
The point that WotC is ignoring is that "You don't have to play with it" is a false statement. You do not have to put the card into your deck, but in a game of magic, all the cards in the decks are part of the game. You are playing with your opponent, therefore you do "have" to play with "it" if your opponent uses the card in their deck.
I keep making this point as well. Competitive players are gonna gravitate towards the strongest cards, always, so you know you'll see some UB cards basically every round of a major tournament now (because of course WOTC will make them broken to drive sales). Even for the casual scene, try getting everyone in a Commander group to play only with MTG-lore (non UB cards). Probably possible but very limiting to the number of people you can find for your group.
Yeah, 100%
Finally i hear someone say it! I've heard the same thing mutiple times, but in a way i am forced to play with the cards because my opponent can still play with them.
I really wish they would make something like a Universes Within and a Universes Beyond format maybe
i left my own comment touching on this and several other issues i have w/ this "philosophy", but i agree. Many people might say that you can just ask them to play w/o UB in casual formats like EDH but even then it's not that simple bc, for one, they might not remember every card in their deck or if it has UB or a card from whichever set, OR they might only have one deck option OR no cards they can swap in or so many possibilities that you just cant consistently rely on just "asking your opppnents nicely"
@@crusaderpenguin5326 You're going to buy 4 singles of SpongeBob, Jellyfisher for standard and you're going to like it.
‘If you don’t like it, don’t buy it’ works in exactly one context: limited play like draft, sealed, and cube. That’s it.
If enough people is not buying it, they will drop it.
If it sells, there is a market, if there is a market and you don't like the direction, stop playing. Complaining on the Internet, achieves nothing; sales numbers talk, not tantrums on internet.
@easyygo3008 If there were no connection between sales numbers and community sentiment, you wouldn't see so many so many companies trying to pay for positive reviews of a product. Marketing is such big business because it works
I was literally just about to make a comment that wizards just assumes everyone is playing cube or magical christmas land commander where communication within a playgroup is always perfect.
@@easyygo3008 You absolute wanker. Complaining (on the internet or otherwise) is meant to show that you care. That you want to quit if things stay as they are now, and therefore telling WotC "I'm one of the voices that would pay for this, but not for that, take me into account when choosing what you do".
Not to mention the possibility to convince someone else to also vote with their wallet, making a change not only by yourself but as a community.
@@easyygo3008 Dude, you literally skipped over the part where if all you have to say is basically stop talking, then you're doing exactly what you have a problem with. You're complaining about complaining. Why should anyone take hypocritical advice? People are annoyed, but unfortunately, too many keep buying the most of these products so that WotC just keeps cranking out the problems. Eventually the game will dwindle down in popularity and they'll have to figure out why when it's too late. And just because we're complaining on the Internet doesn't mean we're not also using our wallet. I haven't bought a single secret lair, I barely bought any product at all in 2024 resorting mostly to getting singles.
Company: Please don't buy our products.
Okay then.
Haha, preach!
"Don't like it, don't buy it. You don't have to interact with it."
Cool I don't take two from this draw then, since I don't have to interact with your Sheoldred
Yeah, it just doesn't work
I think it's better to have a community that voices complains, compared to a community that is complacent.
100% agree
Complaining alone won't get you half as far as complaining and not buying.
WOTC wants its customers the same way the democrats want their voters, and yes, the ven diagram of this is almost 1 pure circle
Sure, but complaining is all we get out of the Magic community. I don’t watch much Magic content outside of MTGGoldfish because of the universal cynicism people have for the game.
Agreed, but at the same time it can go overboard at times.
"you don't have to buy it. You don't have to play with it. Just abandon playing standard/commander/any format"
FleshNBlood join the chat 😅
Chef Chef calls you home
I suspect kitchen table magic is the future
Sorcery: Contested Realm joins the chat
Actually most of these really expensive and hard to get cards are illegal in pauper. Reject Commander, embrace Pauper!
I’ve never even held a Magic card but seeing all those 3rd party IP sets makes me feel so bad for ya’ll. Having a game morph from a unique fantasy vibe to “Mickey v SpongeBob” in real time must be insanely frustrating. Hope it gets better for ya’ll soon
So do I friend
I really struggle to understand how people can unironically say "if you don't like it, don't play it" in a multiplayer-focused game where other players' choices have a huge impact on your experience.
Not to mention, as you said, it's not possible to know for certain if you will or won't like something in advance. Some things might surprise you. Some things might seem great at first but quickly become stale. Some things might grow on you as time goes on. It's simply not possible to anticipate these things.
It's because they're solitaire players. They're the type who doesn't really pay any attention to their opponent or their deck. They don't really understand why anyone might have a problem with what someone else plays - unless of course they play a deck that prevents their deck working, then they're very liberal with the ban requests.
Yeah, like I feel bad about how hard I went in this video. But "If you don't like it, don't play it" is just the same as being told to shut up and quit the game to me
I mostly play Modern and Yugioh!. LotR (because of Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring) and MH3 just decimated the format. Trying to make cards relevant in an eternal format means you have to have some serious powercreep. I'm used to it in Yugioh!, where we get a new Tier 1 deck every other set and it's been that way for 22 years, but Magic just isn't designed for that. Designing for Commander is going to kill Magic.
@@Kylora2112 Tier 1 (1 to maybe 4 decks) feel like a fun boss challenge for rogue decks in design.
Also eternal means sometimes an ancient card becomes playable cause interactions.
I think Nibiru (destroying 5 monsters cause summoning) cannot exist in MTG,
This is how YGO deals with power creep
@@funa. Trident Dragion went from being a $5 card no one played and only had one reprint (and nothing since 2014) to shooting up to $100 because of Tenpai Dragons, a deck that specialized in summoning FIRE dragon synchro monsters (and back down to $6 after getting a reprint this fall). Stuff like this happens all the time.
And it's funny...most Yugioh! rogue decks are simply 2-3 years behind the power curve of the game. My Marincess deck from 2022 (a Tier 2/rogue deck after getting legacy support for its 2019 debut) would have been on-par with anything from 2019, and dominated almost anything released prior).
Most Yugioh hand traps can't exist in Magic. The reason they're good is because they're free and you can use them on Turn 0, and almost everything in Yugioh is generic (I don't need to play FIRE/zombies to drop an Ash Blossom), so it's all modular and their effects stop core parts of the game.
A Dead by Daylight dev said it best: If your community is complaining, that means they care. If they go silent, you should be worried. (paraphrasing ofc)
Oooh, very true. Very true
a DBD dev said that? OOFFFFF
i quit DBD because of how little shits they gave about their players and game,,
@ i quit because the games felt super slow and kinda like a moba
The release of Universe Beyond content will continue until morale improves. 😮💨
Haha, very good
. . . or until all morale is lost and MTG becomes the Super Smash Bros of card games that is funded by the whales, but i do hope you're right
@@the_step_dan323 I would have said the Fortnite of Card games, but at least the out of universe additions to Fortnite don't shatter it's core functionality and aren't effectively mandatory...
If only these sets weren’t designed to constantly raise the bar of power. Meaning that eventually you will need to buy the new cards.
Yeah, 100%. Power creep is a massive issue
Commander becoming the de facto new Standard format means they need to keep shoveling out more and more and stronger and stronger cards to keep people buying cards. Standard as the standard means people are tweaking their decks every few months and building a new deck every few years. Powercreep in eternal formats means you need to keep buying every single set.
i guess, too fast releases was not planned in the 3 year set rotation.
Also not sure if there are counterspells for too strong cards, which would work
in eternal format with (a more)lack of ban lists.
Play... a different... game. Take up a different hobby even.
We saw this in Yu-Gi-Oh BTW. There's no rotation in YU-Gi-Oh, power creep became a big problem, (and people hated Pendulums and Link Summoning) so the players just created their own vintage format. And the best part of playing with exclusively the older cards is you don't have to give the company any new money. The very fact that this is a discussion being had is evidence that the new paradigm isn't as monolithic as it may seem at a glance.
I mean, we've seen what happens with 'vote with your wallet' with video games. Those people who actually can 'not buy' the things with issues because of their self control will eventually run out of things to buy.
The whales and people who don't give a damn about the overall health of the game, or the playerbase, just consume.
I don’t know about you but my transition to indie video games has made my video game experience much better than the AAA games this last decade. Magic is simply about to give me that same feeling when I switch to flesh and blood or sorcery or whatever.
What does it even mean to run out of things to buy? You don't need video games to live. If you find it difficult to avoid buying video games, seek therapy immediately.
Also, our wallets voted Concord into oblivion, for just one easy example.
Well I would never suggest piracy in that situation...
@@innocentsmith6091 no they didn't because there has never been any such thing as voting with anything except a ballot.
capitalism is not democratic.
@@innocentsmith6091 What I mean about running out of things to buy is how swiftly full priced games have 'microtransactions' that are the price of indie games have risen. The amount of day 1 DLCs and 'pay for convenience' transactions.
There was an outcry against that, where a lot of people were railing against it. Despite that though, people were buying these games.
Our wallets didn't vote Concord into oblivion, their marketing department did. Also a counterpoint, Fortnite did exactly what people are accusing MtG of doing, and it's _still_ making stupid amounts of money despite every discussion around it being degrading towards the game, and having all but one of my playgroup just moving on.
After 30+ years, Wizards hasn't learned that the MtG community is an ecosystem, not a buffet. Everything will inevitably affect everyone until everyone decides to leave.
100%, you're spot on
They don't actually believe what they say, they're just saying it to try and put out fires.
Wizards have learned that Universes Beyond bring new players that buy more and make more money than the veterans. They didn't decided to make half of Magic sets universes beyond because they love spending money on license and angering their players. They did it, because these products have excellent sales.
Wizards is hold by Hasbro, that has only one objective: money. If making money means disgruntling some of their older players, they will do it ^^
Feels good to have someone like Red actually talking about these problems with MTG. As someone who grew up with it, playing shitty piles of kamigawa, lorywyn and whatever else I could get my hands on, it sucks to see what MTG is now. I took a long break from the game, thinking it just wasn't my thing anymore. But I've come to realize I really do love MTG. I love the game, most of the mechanics, the unique and interesting worlds they used to have, the old art. Getting back into MTG and looking at the massive amount of products, and just being disappointed with what they've done story and lore wise. I've felt like a crazy person seeing everyone else eat it up lmao. Thanks Red.
No no, thank you. It's nice to know I'm not alone
Holy shit. God that first minute was cathartic.
Haha, you're welcome?
"If you don't like it, don't buy it" is exactly the reason why I haven't bought any MTG product in about 8 years despite formerly being a massive collector
Yeah, that's both positive for you and also the thought of it kinda makes me sad. Like, I suspect I'm on the same track as you, but I like the game and I don't want to have to give it up. You know?
I played from 4. Edition till Mirrodin and somehow got sucked in again when the Dominaria United story started (and I realized how much some of my old cards are worth now).
And sometimes I wonder if it's my fault that everything when to shit faster and faster since then, cause I seem to have a talent to pick the exact worst moment to get into something, be it stocks or cryptocurrency, before it collapses.
Sorry, I guess -_-
Magic is a game that revolves around knowing what cards exist in a format, what your opponent is playing, what they could be playing, and when they do play a card exactly how the nuances of the rules in this context so you can either play around it, or understand the context of what will happen when a card resolves. Magic is about proactively thinking about what cards you're likely to see and play against when you go to the local gamestore, or a tournament, play or your local playgroup, and how to pre-emptively design your deck to both interact favourably against what they could do and/or not just be completely stone-walled by something they could do. Magic is about reactively thinking about past games, and flaws in your deck designs and how you can change them to better position themselves to win, or have more fun in the attempt. But in order to do any of these you need to be acutely aware of every or almost every card available to both you and your opponents, and how the rules interact with them. You can't just turn up, pretend they don't exist and play (or at least do so and intend to win and/or have more fun than just playing solitaire).
P.S. I lost my first modern game on turn 2 to a card I didn't know existed, played in a way that I couldn't predict with my 10 years of magic experience (cycle Street Wraith for 2 life). I can't even fathom how many such unknown cards and interactions will exist if I "skip the parts of magic that aren't for me".
Yeah, my point exactly. So how often I'm hearing people say to skip sets is really frustrating. Hence the video haha
That may have been the kind of game MtG used to be, but it fundament is no longer a game of understanding interactions and knowing the card pool. Now days it's a wacky carnival of effects where players race to have their deck "Do its thing" before ultimately crumbling to its lack of strategy and cohesion. It is a circus, a joke, and a crying shame.
I'm glad I distanced myself from MtG a while ago. I don't know how poorly I'd be handling the news that Cloud Strife will be Standard legal if I was still playing.
Telling me to “just skip the spiderman set” is like telling a spider man fan “just skip the next teletubbies-spiderman movie”
It's required watching for the next Avenegers film
@@RedBobcatGames Yes and very much canonical
@@chloeann55 I mean, yeah, and Spider-man fan absolutely do that? Like, how many Spider-man fan do you know that feels obligated to watch the current Spider-Man cartoon for toddlers or read the Spider-Man promotionnal comic from OfficeMax?
@ Oh ok well at least we agree universes beyond is primarily not made for dedicated fans but for toddlers
@ I was more ok with it when it was secret lairs but having a full standard set is equivalent to the spiderman franchise crossing over with scoobydoo for their newest big budget box office film
The vast majority of Secret Lairs and UB did used to be quite avoidable outside of Commander. Likewise a Standard grinder could ignore Modern Horizon sets entirely. The new 50/50 IP split all in Standard (and therefore all eternal formats) is beyond the pale but the phrase "this product isn't for you" used to have some meaning.
Yeah, totally
I don't like it and I don't buy it, doesn't change the fact that every week I need to sit in a commander pod where we have Warhammer 40k Necrons vs The Eleventh Doctor vs Fallout Mutants.
Yup, completely
Well, clearly it's not that offensive to you, since you go each week anyway. If it was as bad as your whining makes it out to be, then you'd either, find another pod that aligns with your views, or stop playing. But you're enduring it, so it's clearly not bad enough for you to do anything more than whine in youtube comments about it.
@@JShann04 Yeah sorry I don't like fighting optimus prime and (soon to be) spongebob in my fantasy card game, refer to the video
@@skelskeleton But you don't seem to dislike it enough to make you stop playing. It's clearly not even enough for you to find a group of people who match with your opinions that you all agree to not play those decks. You're still going to the same games and acting like you expect things to change. News flash, they won't change because sitting around bitching about it isn't actually doing anything to enact change. All I see are people sitting around pissing and moaning, but none seem actually prepared to make any form of personal sacrifice or any effort at all to do anything that would facilitate change.
What's the issue with this?
Another aspect of the product overload that I think bears consideration is that the increased pace of releases has meant that product becomes quickly unavailable once release has passed. When Lost Caverns of Ixalan dropped I was keen on the merfolk commander deck, but had other bills and costs to pay for so couldn’t preorder or buy on release. When I was in a place where I had a bit of money free for magic I couldn’t find a copy of that deck even on the secondary market. I could still find sealed Ikoria commander decks in some game stores or on secondary resellers almost 4 years after that set released but could find a commander deck for a set that released a year ago. And maybe this is a country specific thing, I’m based in New Zealand but my experience in the last year of magic especially has been that the constant release schedule means that the print run for sets is smaller or stores are ordered less and if you don’t get in when a set releases, then you miss out, which sucks when this uptick in releases coincides with an economic downturn that means i need to be more deliberate about how and when I spent money.
It's even worse for some of their "premium" sets where a store will maybe only get 1 or 2 of them in total. You're right, and this all leads into accessibility. It all feeds into the next issue
In theory that would be where the T in TCG comes to bear: instead of buying the decks at release, you could always build them later, buying the singles or trading for them. That is, if you are lucky and the deck you are trying to copy didn't have any chase cards in them, which is usually the reason why they sell so fast in the first place.
For me, all the little feel-bads have now reached the point where I opted out of Constructed. I'll keep a bit of Jumpstart around for friends when they visit, and play pre-releases of sets that look good. But that's about it.
The problem with keeping the printers running all the time is that they're virtually never available for reprints. I remember thinking of that when people were struggling to get the Warhammer 40K decks and it's only gotten worse since then.
My play group all agreed that we're not going to use UB stuff except Lord of the Rings, and we already play with price limits on our decks so most of this stuff will straight up not hit our table. But next year, that means we won't even be able to go to the prereleases. I loved the prereleases. I loved getting immersed in and excited for a setting, learning how this set plays. And now there is 1 (One) singular set that's coming out next year that is interesting to me.
The problem for me (and many others) is that I DON'T have a playgroup like this. I primarily play Magic during game nights at the game store. So I'm forced to interact with all these cards even if I don't want to and wouldn't buy them myself. It really sucks.
I was so excited to buy collector packs of final fantasy to maybe finally get into commander instead of standard, not to be forced to play them in standard. Standard is already too damn expensive and UB makes it even worse
Same with draft. Most stores only draft the most recent standard set, which means in 2025 there could be as few as 7 weeks during which I can draft a fun set without having to organise my own pod, since Aetherdrift and Star Wars are functionally UB too.
Many people will be in this exact same boat. 2025's going to be really interesting to watch at least
2:55 I don't play magic now, but back 20-25 years ago when i was casually playing with my friends, having that momentous occasion where the expansion set comes out every few months drummed up a lot of excitement and discussions as everyone was looking forward to the same thing.
Now that seems like its lost.
Welcome to my brand new magic format: universes within. This is a new type of *meta* format that gets added onto any other format where all cards featuring outside IP, and any secret lair exclusives are added to the existing banlist for the chosen format.
Can we also just ban all Secret Lairs, especially the ones that don't even look like regular Magic cards?
@RedBobcatGames considering they are actually in universe cards probably not. Even then banning non secret lair universe beyond cards is extremely elitist as I have heard signifinat portion of commander players use the universe beyond precons.
@@XenithShadowit’s not “elitist” it’s simply refusing to engage with the parts of the game I don’t enjoy, feel free to not play universes within.
@@XenithShadow hey its not elitism that I don’t want to play against the spiderman precons. If you don’t like universes within don’t play the format.
There're 2 points I would like to make:
1. We're a small fraction of MTG playerbase, our complaints will almost certainly fall short behind *sales*.
2. I've personally come to terms with the fact that my opinion (my bottom line if you will) won't matter. Whenever I see someone complaining to MaRo (I used to do it even), he usually pulls out their famous Market Research, which is something we can't argue against. As Rhystic Studies elegantly puts it: "we were lectured about invisible people who care about Magic beyond our little internet bubbles. The gas burns brightest from street lamps just above your wary head."
The game needs new blood, and selling cardboard Funko Pops seems to be the chosen way. Old players' opinions (legitimate or not) won't be taken into consideration.
I don't believe a word out of MaRo's lying snake mouth. Dude's a stooge through and through and the sooner people realize he's soulless flesh automaton the better.
Oh yeah, I imagine you're right. But venting like this does make me feel better though
But if 99.9999% of players play commander, why defecate UB cards in all other formats? Would it be too much to have ONE format without that garbage?
tbh i dont think UB actual gets more players, it just get more money out of existing players who are fans of that material, thats why LOTR sold well, bc the mtg and LOTR fanbase overlapped alot alread
@@the_step_dan323 no I think it gets a lot of new customers buying cards as the main driver of growth, but I doubt it actually gets a lot of new PLAYERS. They probably just buy it to look at their favorite characters and references to whatever IP they are into, maybe try and play a game or two, and it goes straight on the collection shelf forever.
Honestly I was fine seeing 1-2 cards from a UB secret lair(my main “Don’t like it”) every now and then, but the fact by the end of this year someone could sit across from me with an entire commander deck(or almost guaranteed, standard) entirely of cards not from the MtG Universe and function synergistically really gets to me.
I bet you feel the same way about foreigners, bigot
I bet you feel the same way about foreigners, you bigot
You're not alone either
The only occasion that I use this kind of argument is when one of my, non-competetive playing, buddies is caught up in company and social media induced FOMO again. So it's less of "stop criticizing" and more in a "you don't need to sell a kidney to have the newest cool shite, the things you have are working perfectly fine" kind of way.
You know what, I didn't consider that angle but you're completely right
So many people use the "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" line for everything, not just card games. Often coupled with other clichés like "let people enjoy things".
But the second something they don't like is announced, THEIR criticism is important and" valid", and we all need to listen and discuss it.
Agree or disagree with others criticisms, they should be allowed to make their case without being so casually dismissed. You can evaluate the validity of their claims, and sometimes criticism is genuinely nonsensical or not applicable. But we can't keep dismissing things off hands under the guise of "positivity" or "community" or whatever buzzword is justifying the latest corporate decision.
Let people hate things.
Oh yes, 100% agree
The day I loose to a spider man card in mtg arena standard is probably the day I stop playing it altogether.
*lose
So 2025 will be your last year of standard because that’s going to happen.
@@christopherb501 Don't be a jerk
I feel the same way. Honestly not sure what I'll do at that point. Like I said in the vid, you can't not engage with a set without really quitting the game totally
@@Jon_East They did nothing rude.
Just seems to me like they are trying to fleece addicted people of all their money. Along with tricking unknowing people of other fandoms into buying fomo products for way too much of what it actually cost to produce. It's pretty disgusting.
and ofc lets not forget value boosters!! what a great scam that one is am i right!!(screw WoTC, they're a load of bs)
Yup, pretty much
"don't like it, don't buy it" is the first step on the road to "why is no one buying anything we make"
Yeah, completely. It's madness
"Don't like it, don't buy it" doesn't mean shit when investors and whales make up the majority of purchases. Lord of the Rings isn't the most cracked set because it's the most fun or well designed. It's because investors stand to make the most money.
@@KILOBify it was never going to be an immediate process showing instant results just because you skip a set or two. It's a long process of snowballing. Eventually the whales will be left with no one left to play with, and they'll move on themselves, and Hasbro is left holding the bag. You have to hold firm and keep saying "nuh uh," even if it means you stop being able to play competitively, or your playgroup starts getting smaller. If you don't like the direction MTG is going in, stop paying for it. Full stop. No one booster here or there, no pre-releases, nothing. It sucks, but it's the only way to make "don't like it, don't buy it" actually work.
The thing is, there's ALWAYS someone buying SOMETHING.
Do you think epilogue boosters got cancelled because of backlash or because people didn't buy them? I figured the most effective way to cut down all this extraneous stuff is to organize boycotts but it seems Magic influencers don't ever bring up ideas like that.
Because people didn’t buy them. Cards were so expensive because nobody opened them.
Well it all goes hand in hand. Boycotts don't tend to work but marketing, both positive and negative can have a massive effect on whether people buy a set or not, which in turn affects sales numbers
@ I beg to differ. People have been trying to boycott Secret Lairs/Universes Beyond for a long time, and they were still sold out. There is a reason we don’t have epilogue boosters anymore, but we do still have Universes Beyond/ Secret Lairs.
@@definitelynotmany4972 yeah, w/o scalpers life would be better or if they printed Secret Lairs to demand like before, then their sales would reflect actual interest (or be more accurate)
Influencers leaving the game doesn't typically lead to much more than their influence being severely reduced.
See Reynad, Lifecoach, and plenty of other streamer influencers, versus the less influential people who stuck around through bad design choices, blocks, and standard eras.
CGB, TCC, etc are all pretty vocal about not loving the new releases schedules... but not interacting with them will hurt them as creators significantly more than it will hurt the company.
A mass movement might, but it is still a pyrrhic victory.
With everything that's been going on in the last few months, and realizing that I only play commander/ non-competitive, I've decided to hang up my wallet. Proxies forevermore
That and kitchen table magic are the future I think
The Slippery Slope: it was NEVER a fallacy.
The slippery slope is an informal fallacy, there can be times where there is one (a business seeing something makes them money and does that thing more) and times where there isn't (gay marriage will lead to marriage between people and dogs for an example that is very much not true)
@@winter945People have litterally tried to use arguments used for gay marriage to support pedophilia.
The slippery slope is, in theory, a tool for showing why an argument is flawed("if that's your basis, it can also support this"), not a prediction of the future or even necessarily an argument against something. I've pointed to both pro and anti abortion arguments as being victim to slippery slope because they were poorly constructed, for example.
The problem is that people try to use slippery slope as objection and not warning. If I tell you you've stood on a slippery slope, I am not saying you're going to inevitably slide- I'm telling you to set your feet and guard against it.
And 2025's looking like more of the same!
@winter945 Reducto ad absurdum does not make the slippery slope a fallacy. The entire point of an argument is to illuminate reality and consider logical consequences before they happen.
If you take the brakes off a parked car on an incline, it will slide downhill, which, regardless of what it might crash into, is a risk to yourself and others. Calling that a slippery slope argument is to ignore the reality of gravity.
I only started in Brothers War and quickly moved to Commander as my main play. When I heard the sentiment "Not every product is for you" sentiment from Wizards my first thought was "Bullshit". Their most popular format is basically all sets legal with 4 players, who DOESNT get affected? This idiotic statement serves them 2 purposes: the first being a distraction from the release schedule and power creep engine, the second being a reassurance to the whales they will keep delivering.
Yeah, it's maddness honestly
We're stuck dealing with a culture full of vacuously skulled consumers that are so without any meaningful sense of taste that every possible version of a product is equal to them. And at that point I see no reason not to simply impose my preferred version of things on them. They clearly cannot tell the difference anyway, I couldn't cause them harm if I wished to!
That sounds like the "seatbelts in cars" argument. As long as it's for their betterment, sometimes people do need to be told what to do. VERY thin line there of course, so can be dangerous ground
Do not think. Consume do not think. If you no consume, no consume. Me consume. Only no think can consume.
Pretty much, yeah
I ended up playing against an Iron Man EDH deck the other day and I was not happy having to interact with it. The only way to avoid it would be to stop playing, but I don't want to do that.
Universes Beyond was a mistake that will never be fixed because it *sells*
Yeah, and it sucks. They're not even printing Universes Within cards anymore either
@@RedBobcatGames At least with EDH we can rule 0 things.
@@CyrusdVulture Only until you get rule 0'd instead. If everyone plays with UB cards because they help their subpar commander perform better then slowly less and less people will want to agree to not run any.
Especially with whole sets of new cards being entirely UB with no UW alternative.
"No cards from the last 2 sets" is suddenly a much bigger ask than not running the cards from the walking dead secret lair.
@luminous3558 less of a reason to rule 0 a legitimately made deck than there is to rule 0 the money grabbing cards that don't fit the game.
Or you could just stop playing Commander aka the skibidi toilet brain rot "format"
Magic has turned into an investment opportunity as much, if not more than it is a game these days. It doesn’t matter if the normal folks say they don’t like the direction of the product when there are people buying pallets of every product just to hold onto them for resale in a decade.
"dont like it dont play/buy it" people also tend to be the loudest anti-proxy people as well. so the biggest alternative to wasting money on things you either dont like or cannot afford also will trigger a salt response from them.
Preach!
"This is our most inclusive product yet, it is meant to be for everyone, and if you don't like it don't buy it, it's not for you."
Haha, yeah. When you put it like that it's even more crazy
I'm already in that boat.
It's not often I get anything sealed for Magic. I usually get singles, and I basically get sealed products if there is a specific reason to get it.
Buying the singles still motivates resellers to buy the boxes in bulk to get the singles. Proxies are the way to vote with your dollar. Saves you money, doesn’t stimulate the magic economy, lets you use the cards.
I honestly think proxies and kitchen table will be the future for most magic players
Starting to feel like this game isn't for me.
"You criticize Magic: The Gathering yet you participate in it. Curious"
- Matt Bors' famous comic, applied to sycophants for this game.
Your point isn't very clear here, of what stance you're supposedly mocking.
Yeah, I love the game. Doesn't mean I have to accept it and can't expect it to be better though
You already make great videos, but this is your most well thought out and best video!! I'm sure I've said *those words* at some point, but you've genuinely made me think about this, and I'll do my best to not ever say them again at least in this context. I think there are other things that don't relate to consumerism that it is perfectly reasonable to say an equivalent to "then just don't buy it", and actually should have an equivalent of *those words* said, but I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to fans of a product voicing their concerns.
Thanks, and great work!
No worries, and thank you. And of course you're right. I focused on one instance of saying "Just don't buy it" here, but there will always be times when that's good advice. I've probably said it myself more than once. In fact I think that was my suggestion around Value Boosters
goodness, today's "I wanna talk about" was so menacing 💀
Yeah, I knew I was bringing some spice here. I don't want to upset people, but I also knew what I was getting into. I just hate how often I'm seeing people try to silence criticism, you know?
The first minute hit me like a truck and im here for it. Love your content
Haha, thank you. Glad you... enjoyed?
@RedBobcatGames definitely enjoyed!
The mentality of "don't like it? don't buy/watch it" is one I don't always get, and it's usually something commonly said by people that likely have room temperature IQ, because they can't handle the thought of anyone having criticisms about a product they found to be flawed. This isn't always the case, but more often than not, this kind of mentality is common with those kinds of people. It's not something you can just say to someone half the time to magically dispel all criticisms regarding a certain thing, because it implies that the fella with said criticisms isn't a fan of said thing to begin with, when it's more likely that they are, and they care enough to warrant making a point to begin with, because they're not pleased with where subject thing is headed, or what it's doing.
And sometimes, that kind of mentality makes little sense as well. For example, imagine telling a Star Wars enjoyer that thought the Sequel Trilogy was shite, that the Sequel Trilogy was not for them. So if it wasn't for fucking STAR WARS FANS, then who was it for? This is a question they won't answer because more than likely, they don't know the answer to it.
There's some good exceptions though, like voting with your wallet and choosing to not support certain things financially altogether, in a form of protest. For example, I gave up on Activision Blizzard games after coming to the realisation that they are not getting any better anytime soon. I stopped enjoying their products, so I stopped buying them altogether. The same can be said for MTG. There's a lot of stuff they're putting out that I just don't like, or isn't for me personally, so I don't buy into it. But when they do come out with something worth my time, like Foundations, I'm more than willing to buy it, because I actually care about it.
Hilariously, some of the same people that would tell you that a product was not made for you, will probably eventually regret that decision when someone decides "good idea, I won't support the thing." I've seen examples of this, and it's just funny to watch.
It's a really weird mentality that I just don't fully understand quite yet, and probably never will. But I think it's safe to say that I've not often seen these words specifically used for anything meaningful, other than just telling some guy his thoughts are invalid and that he should shut up, which is not exactly helpful nor insightful.
I know it's slightly off topic from MTG, but this thing is rather universial and isn't just present in MTG discourse. It's fucking everywhere, and it's annoying.
It's worse than that tbh. It's the clarion call of the consoomer. They genuinely don't understand that you might love and care about something but do so because of what it is and not because of what it's called. It's why star wars fans were lambasted for critiquing nu wars, for example. Some people simply can't grasp that a thing is more than the label on the tin.
Slightly off topic also, but Star Wars lost me when Disney decided the expanded universe wasn't canon anymore, because honestly Knights of the Old Republic was the best Star Wars media going
@@RedBobcatGames I'm more of a casual fan in that regard, so can't speak too much on that, but I do agree they did the EU a bit dirty, especially when they bring some characters out from there, just to do them dirty.
I will never forgive them for what they did to Scorch. Absolutely wasted the guy. Never played Republic Commando, but from what I understand of those games, yeah, I see why fans were pissed.
I remember when the phrase "This product isn't for you" was offense to me. Then I realized Rosewater was right, as the years have passed. Who am I to facilitate a parasitic relationship with a company that prints pieces of cardboard? To them, I'm just a number, same as if I were an employee.
To expect this billion-dollar property to capitulate to my desires and concerns, based off the fact I've been their customer for 20 years, is simply delusional, if not ludicrous. In fact, Wizards should NOT be trying to satisfy me or people my age. WOTC needs to sell their game to a brand-new generation of players, to ensure another 20 years of customers.
To be a gamer in this age is to also be entitled. To let go of that entitlement, and instead enjoy the product for what it is will truly set you free from the paradox that is being a gaming customer.
Oh I don't know. I see where you're coming from, but I feel there's more to it than that. If we're talking gaming a whole, this "new generation" have had things like microtransactiosn, DLCs and Lootboxes normalized for them. That's in part why I suspect corportations want to focus on them as their main / only customers, as they can make more money from them. But I'd happily say those things are anti-consumer and objectively bad. Things literally DID used to be better, and yes I think its fair to try and get a company to adopt older ways of doing business.
@RedBobcatGames"The new generation is used to lootboxes unlike us enlightened millennials who were addicted to spending money on MTG packs which are are certainly not the original lootboxes or anything. Actually wild that you can live on your high horse thinking like that while being so blind to see the dissonance to it.
@RedBobcatGames I agree, things did used to be better. While kids these days have to deals with MTX, DLC, and Lootboxes, we also have been dealing with them for the better part of twenty years. That's where we are in this day and age, and what's going to happen twenty years from now will be even more anti-consumer. But that's the trade. If you want to consume, you have to pay the price.
And if we're criticizing MTX and Lootboxes, Magic was the first game to do it. The entire industry has adapted to WOTC's very intuitive business model over the last thirty years. So much so, that Dr. Garfield himself made that wary post about a decade ago, warning against the rise of Skinner models, that also served as a shot towards WOTC. Nothing has changed for the better since then, whether its in Magic, or the gaming industry.
quitting magic turned out to be very fun for me. just take some pop corn and wait until magic dies.
If Elon does as he's saying and buys Hasbro, I may do just that
I have essentially stopped buying Magic product, with rare exceptions of old booster packs for chaos commander draft fun and even more rarely singles (and often proxies at that) for my commander decks which I have almost entirely stopped upgrading.
I am going to start selling off my high value old cards after I move later this month because I don’t trust that reserve list won’t get messed up eventually. M30 was the first pass.
Epilogue boosters failed not because people complained but because NOBODY BOUGHT THEM. You're money is louder than your voice.
Sure, but part of why no one bought them was because of the talk around them. Marketing works, that's why companies pay reviewers for positive reviews. Critisism of a bad product works the same in reverse. If it didn't we wouldn't have the advertising industry
“This product isn’t for you. Only interact with the sets that you like” “on an unrelated note, we’re making less and less products for you. Don’t interact with the sets that aren’t for you.”
For the most part, I've stopped interacting with the product that isn't for me. Which means, I currently play Balatro, Slay the Spire, and every so often dominion, but not MTG any more.
And for that matter, I've found that I quite like not having about 40% of games decided by mana issues on either side.
I'm sorry my bobcat friend, but you and everybody else seem to have missed a very important point here.
Just because it's "not for you" - probably for financial reasons (cos hey the good cards are printed on a more expensive cardboard) - that does not mean you can ignore these cards when you find yourself playing against them on a game of commander.
WOTC are ruthlessly exploiting pay to win where they can to the detriment of the game. It's not for you. Is their attempt to brainwash you in to accepting their monetisation of what was once a beautiful game.
Actually you do about ten minutes in sorry!
Did you watch the video?
@daviddobson1659 No need to apologise at all my friend. You're golden!
I'm not a fan of Universes Beyond, but that didn't stop me from sitting down at a commander table at my LGS with my Universes Beyond free deck facing Optimus Prime, Doctor Who, and Jeff Goldblum from Jurrassic Park and those were just the commanders. These are all characters I love in their own IPs, but I don't want to see them in my Magic game...
No, and you're not alone either
I like how Aaron Foresythe gets introduced to a new format and the first deck he builds has armageddon in it and he doesn't understand why that's a problem.
Commander is the only bizarro world format where playing legal cards in your deck can be considered "a problem."
Land destruction is a legal strategy.
It's scrub mentality to categorically ban it.
But it serves my point though, that everyone's perspective of what the game "should be" is vastly different
@@Chewy-Pudding Yes, human beings are social, not just game-theory machines. Truly a bothersome issue.
might explain why every format is kind of miserable to play at this point. And it's definitely not Armageddon as a card but the whole design mentality of not letting others play the game against you and close the door as fast as possible seems to definitely be a thing they design for lately. Like aggro being able to beat you on t2-3 in standard is just stupid and bad design.
Your videos are always well spoken.
I agree with your sentiments.
Why thank you very much!
What if I DO like it, but WOTC fuxed up and made it too expensive or limited to be available? I liked 30th Ed, would have bought it if it weren't 250 a pack.
Then you can proxy it.
Yeah, proxy is the way to go then I feel
The problem with if you don’t like it don’t buy it is I still have to sit across from someone using freaking sponge bob as their commander.
Waiting for Elon Musk to buy Hasbro and make them put the 15th card back in packs.
i cannot think of a single thing that would make me instantly stop playing MTG more than elon musk buying Hasbro
Do NOT. even joke about that. Until it stops being a brain-fart of a Stinky Twit and becomes yet another facet of our horrifying reality, do NOT. JOKE. ABOUT. THAT.
I hope elon buys hasbro ! Magic is in good hands by the wealthy memelord.
I cannot wait, I want him to buy funny Hasbro so he can officially call one of his tesla vehicles Optimus Prime.
He'd take out 4 more cards
I also love how *explicitly* hated Aftermath was, and they have research that shows just how much... To the decimal.
Haha, yeah
Rasmussen's quote basically breaks down to " Magic used to be special, it is no longer special and thats just how its going to be now."
"Because we can make more money this way"
Dammed if you do. Damned if you dont.
Exactly!
I think that point only works for "premium" versions of products that already exist. Like all-foil versions of precons.
True, but even then I'd say only if there's still some value in the non-premium versions too. Early days, but it looks like maybe WotC are ONLY putting the spice in collector boosters now, and that's not a great idea because either because you don't want Play Boosters to have nothing extra at all
I started playing Magic in year 3, so I've seen a lot of change. The game has generally gotten better over time, so I'm open minded to changes now (I wasn't when I was younger). After the last few years, all my friends who play have basically dipped because they can't keep up. As a result, I now play Brawl by myself, and I've built a cube to play with my friends on those rare occasions they don't want to play a board game instead. I went from spending several hundred or even a couple thousand a year on the game to buying a few singles to add to the cube.
And I imagine you won't be the only one like that either
"Don't like it, don't buy it" but I have to play against Spongebob and Wolverine :)
Wonderful video with well-reasoned arguments. Thank you for being a force for the preservation of the game.
No no, thank you for watching!
I think magic is no longer for me but I still enjoy it for what it was.
I'm starting to feel that way too
Welcome to the Commander Master Race folks.
The challenge is that I play the cards for the rules that are written on them so if its an IP I think is ridiculous BUT it works in the deck because of its rules I might throw a "Insert Silly Yellow Sponge IP" into my deck as a result.
So I may heavily dislike the silly IP (art,etc) but I'll still buy/play the card for its rules.
2:40 - The LOTR release felt like this because it seemed to stay around for awhile...... Bloomborrow could have been WotC's longer term set and given time to breath with its nifty setting BUT they were in too much of a hurry to replace it, then replace the thing that replaced it.
Yeah, completelty. And also I imagine most players are like yourself in that they're not that interested in the IP of the card. But for someone like me that's such a shame, because Magic's lore could be so good! I wish they'd put more focus on it, so that maybe more people actually would start to care
This why i love KeyForge a little bit more every day. You can buy as many or few decks as you want to play.
Now yes, if you don't want to play Grim Reminders, you don’t have to buy any. True your opponent might bring a deck of it to a tournament. But there's also enough tournament formats out there you can mitigate that too.
I haven't played KeyForge in forever! I didn't even know it was still going. That's awesome to hear. I really enjoyed what I played of it
@@RedBobcatGames it came back! It's latest expansion is crowdfunding right now in fact. LMK if you'd ever like to talk more about it. (we can even do some games online)
But they've also done the equivalent of "un" sets (special decks) which are not tournament legal, so it's like... a rule zero all the time. "We doing something unhinged or something sensible? Super power decks or medium? Dud deck switch? etc"
Oh that's cool. I may have to dig out my old decks again
The modern criticism at 5:11 is spot-on. That's why I liked and played modern, with an off-meta deck that's barely changed in about 10 years, and now I can't - because it's now essentially a rotating format, since MH 1-2-3 and LotR. It felt atrocious, seeing how my strong, fair deck that I've worked on for years was just power crept out of existence.
Nadu wasn't even the main issue; MTG used to be, for me, about the joy of discovering how to connect different cards into synergy. Seeing how I can take a normal card, meant for standard, and find a cool use for it when combining it with cards in Modern or Commander.
But if they make sets for Modern and Commander, then what's the point? That fun is dead. They killed it.
They said recently that they want to stop printing cards into modern, and so instead of making a modern masters set each year they're going to print 3 modern legal UB sets instead... yay? Problem somehow solved?
@@RedBobcatGames @RedBobcatGames Unless they undo several years of horrible treatment, I don't foresee modern ever going back to its days of glory. But at least they recognize the problem, a few years too late.
The most obvious problem with this argument is that even if I don't buy it my opponent could buy it and I'm at a disadvantage or engaging with product I don't like. The other argument I suscribe more to is that even if I don't buy it it influences the product I do buy, I'm a standard player and don't touch commander, several standard sets like Outlaws have a ton of janky multicolored legends, commander design philosophy is bleeding into other formats (remember Nadu) so I can't just ignore it, is also affecting my format.
Yeah, 100%. And now UB is legal in all formats so... what's that even going to look like as a set? Madness
@@RedBobcatGames I genuinely suppressed that, man standard is dying.
Here's a simple fact: It's impossible for you to "not interact with a product they don't like" when your opponent can use it.
Yup, 100%
"Why is nobody playing my game anymore?"
The one nice thing about only buying the sets I like is that I save a lot of money. But as has been said, it really only works if you exclusively play draft / precons and don't engage with players "in the wild" that don't do the same thing. Luckily, I have a playgroup that works well because we share roughly similar preferences (except for the one guy who insisted we draft our way through four Duskmourn boxes...) and for when we get bored with the current cards, there are other boardgames.
It does seem silly for a company to suggest this, but I suspect in the short term, milking the whales is simply a better business strategy than "let's make four good sets a year and regularly reprint the staples"... And then in a few years, when that stops working, they can do some kind of "back to the roots" relaunch and reset the power creep for a while.
I would be fine with a nice three set block per year, ideally set in a world we already know, and then one set for trolling about or doing the crossover stuff. For next year, Dragonstorm is the only set that looks remotely interesting, especially with Innistrad being reprints only.
A few years ago I was one of the target audience who was brought into MTG commander because of the Tyranid Warhammer 40k deck.
I now fully understand why players say some products are just too much.
And they just keep printing more and more
I agree. If you don't like the SpongeBob secret lair, don't buy it. If you don't like UB sets, don't buy them. Magic players talk about buying sealed product like they're being forced to and it's so weird.
One good laserjet printer now costs less than a collector booster display.
Oh wow. Yeah that's one way of thinking about it when you say it like that
I took WotC advice and stopped playing Magic. Thanks Mark Rosewater!
Haha, fair
The irony is that the people who proudly parrot "this product isn't for you" are acting like they won't end up feeling the same in short order. There's nothing wrong with playing outside the box to attract new players, but WotC decided to sell its identity for new money, and sold the older player base too in the process. They have no loyalty, and they deserve none.
To endorse the "don't like it don't buy it" line is to endorse your own planned obsolescence.
Hard agree with all this.
I read in a book one time that a pasta company was trying to find the "best" sauce and there are actually ~5 depending on personal taste. I feel the "no like, no buy" advice works for pasta sauce (and draft/sealed environments) but not for constructed MtG. Unlike pasta sauce, you can't pick it off the shelf and play with it as-is in a constructed format. Every card introduced into a format may be relevant to the larger format. Even if not intended (Ahem, Nadu).
There's also a problem for WOTC in that they've created all these ancillary products like LOTR and Assassin's Creed to pull in new players. WOTC wants those new players to take up EDH, Modern, Standard, and Pauper to keep them coming back and buying more cards. To that end, WOTC can't afford to section off UB from constructed formats, and they're even incentivized to make at least a few cards from each IP impactful enough to be regularly played. *sigh*
Aside: I appreciate MaRo, but from what I've read of his work, he spends most of his time playing new draft environments. So, he's not the best spokesperson when it comes to understanding constructed woes.
Didn't think I'd see a comparison between Magic and Pasta sauce in the comments, but I'm here for it
If UB proves to be more successful than the baseline product, there's no particular logic that favors shirking it in favor of the original design. From a financial standpoint, you're replacing one product with a nearly-identical one which outsells it dramatically.
'Health of the game' depends on some proverbial tipping point, as design quality (and, frankly, art & story quality) were in seemingly-terminal decline well before UB released, and even then year after year the game was more popular than ever before. The idea is always that there's some fulcrum after which the game will crash and be abandoned - which isn't this one, wasn't this one, wasn't that one.
The unfortunate reality is that when the mass-consumer-populace discovers your enjoyable IP or product, your best hope is that it never gets another entry. Because what's going to come out is going to be something designed for a fundamentally different, fundamentally easier-to-please audience. It happens in almost every medium, and in a way it requires a creative process almost wholly-insulated from consumer sentiment to avoid. Which very obviously is not modern Magic, much less Wizards.
People always talk about "the health of the game" in terms of profit growth, as if that isn't exactly how one would measure the health of a tumour. More players and more money makes MTG worse - as the years keep proving. The tipping point is not "when MTG will stop living", it's "when all that's left living in MTG is the sickness".
Yeah, you're not wrong. Though I think about how much WotC are paying out in licensing fees, and have to wonder how much of that could have been spent on full time writers and world builders
@@yurisei6732 Well, yes, you would measure health of a franchise in terms of how much money it brings in if you need to pay a large staff of people earning well above the median wage alongside significant benefits. If my playerbase is growing, and they are spending more, why would I have any reason to care that some slice of the playerbase doesn't like the new tone?
That's why it's important to learn to let go, unless you like rolling boulders up cliffsides. This is hardly the first game/IP to drink from the cursed chalice of consumerism. If you aren't having fun, why bother?
@@RedBobcatGames The trouble is that the licensing fees out-earn hiring on more staff and probably involve less headache. When Hasbro/WOTC started layoffs after the interest rate hike in '22 (like most overstaffed-industries that loaded up on debt), there was a furor about it without much return.
For all the kicking and screaming about Spongebob, it's probably going to sell out and more than make up for that initial cost.
The trouble, which is too boring for most people to stomach, is that this industry has so loaded itself up on bad debt and bad bets that it now has to prioritize the nigh-endless capital streams from consumerists over its original core and dedicated playerbase in order to stay afloat, and there really is no other avenue to address it. It's a pretty mundane story in the world of entertainment, really.
@@bartoffer "The tumour is growing, and the tumour is OK with that, so you should let go". Of course the tumour is OK with growing. I don't respect the insinuation that I should be happy about cancer.
I think it's quite frankly insane for anyone in charge at a company to say "perhaps this product isn't for you". Perhaps my money just isn't for you! Wizards seems to be stuck in the mindset of "we'd rather have one person spend a hundred dollars rather than have two hundred people spend one dollar", a real "but steel is heavier than feathers" mindset. Your products _should_ be for everyone because that inevitably makes you more money than if you were to make hyper-specific products only for niche groups of people! Every customer who can buy your product is a die roll, and why roll one big die when you can roll multiple smaller ones? The odds are so much better on the second one, even if the first one _could_ possibly net a higher number!
The simplest counter to "this product isn't for you" is a sports analogy, imo.
Actually, this is exactly what is happening in the sport I used to compete in, powerlifting.
People keep inventing more supportive (i.e. more kilos-adding) equipment (think elastic suits, the term "elastic" being a bit of a stretch here bc we're talking about literal canvas), more flexible barbells and the like to lift more weight without actually getting stronger. When it comes to equipment, that's a personal and quite a huge investment. Luckily, we have the divisions of equipped and unequipped ("RAW") separated but you can easily see how adding in something entirely new that makes some people better and not others (those who go to a different competition) is an issue in a competitive setting. We don't have one deadlift world record for the open weight division now. We kinda have half a dozen of them (multi-ply, single-ply, deadlift bar, kabuki bar, an actual stiff bar, RAW, different combinations of equipment and bars and even, though from another sport, the strongman deadlift record(s)) and people aren't keeping track of (most of) them separately. You can't really opt out. And in MTG, you're not competing in the record books, you're competing (playing) in different formats or even just the kitchen table.
If you don't like what is happening to MTG and how the game (not your deck, the game) is changing, you're just sh*t out of luck. Either don't play or accept you'll play the game in a way you probably won't like. It's not a LEGO set or a single player game, it's a competitive thing at its core.
Yeah you're right. Though I like to hope that we're totally shit out of luck. WotC have proven that they occasionally listen to the player base, so I'd like to think that complainig actually might have a positive effect on the game, even if it's only a slim chance
Wonderfully said, Great video indeed.
Why thank you very much
Just stop playing. I did awhile ago. I remove magic content from my feed too. Sometimes things slip thru the cracks tho ;)
I like the game though. That's the issue, it's stil fun to me and I don't want to stop playing... yet at least!
I’m halfway through and this is a slam dunk.👍
Why thank you very much
I mean this argument is a great indicator that a product is gonna absolutely bomb on the market.
Oh I dunno. Every set they make seems to sell like hot cakes somehow. Even the ones that bomb at release uptick later. It's mad
if WoTC started listening to the community maybe, but we'll see in the end ig, wont we
When you vote with your dollar, people with more dollars get more votes.
This toxic positivity around products is getting out of control. Nobody can say anything, no matter how valid, without being attacked. Thank you for adding your voice to the protest.
External ip bloat is like stage 1 of enshittification of an ip. Its outright saying "we dont care about our dedicated internal audience, we want to instead draw in an external audience: all the mindless consoomer whales from these other ips who will buy everything that has spongebob/spiderman/whatever on it"
Then, from there marketing shifts towards trying to retain whales which means preserving and expanding the reasons they joined. I fully expect the standard rotation period to get longer and longer to prevent all these universe beyond sets from becoming illegal and many universes beyond cards will escape from being banned when they really should be.
there is also a secondary audience of powergamers who are similar who dont care for the health of the game but gaining and retaining access to the strongest cards of every set and a tertiary audience of speculators who inflate the apparent popularity of sets by buying packs and selling desired cards to these two previous groups.
These three groups combined are terrible for the health of the game when they grow to too significant numbers. If i am playing my silly little bloomburrow squirrel deck i dont want to keep running into decks massively beyond its power level: powergamer decks whos theme is "i win on turn 1 if i have any of these cards from these new sets". I also dont want to be seeing universes beyond, the juxtaposition is jarring regardless of personal feelings on universes beyond (and those feelings are negative). Finally, the speculators dont really even play mtg anyways and are just enablers of the first two!
Final word, power level discrepancy is why mtg arena is so cancerous. Mtg arena being the most accessible way to play mtg online essentially disenfranchises individuals of the power to decide who to and not to play against and which cards should or shouldnt be allowed because you are forced to play by whatever WOTC rules on there. Everyone is incentivized to play the strongest stuff possible to fight over the crumbs of free cards and packs the game feeds you. There is no social or casual mode where you can sit with someone else and they say "hey, my deck isnt very good," and you respond "oh, no worries. I will use one of my weaker decks then"
Edit: apparently i just ended up typing basically the same 5th paragraph twice, wrote this over a few hours on and off so i guess i just forgot i had already said what i had said. the redundant paragraph was removed
I feel like serialized cards is evidence of what you said as well. And as long as Hasbro are making money they won't care, even if it ruins the game in the long run
external factors dictate hobbies unless you have hordes of money.
Sadly, yes
Not wanting to buy a product of a game you otherwise tremendously enjoy IS the problem, not the solution.
Secret layers and other smaller side things like that don't matter so much in that regard, as they are indeed easy and painless skips for all of those except the specific type of person they are for, but it does still contribute to the overload problem for those who want or need to stay on top of every new card or product for one reason or another.
However, when looking forward to a year with standard set after standard set that you just don't want to interact with, despite your head-over-heels love of magic otherwise, yeah, that's when not wanting to buy a product becomes THE problem, even for those who just wish to play kitchen table magic.
Yeah, 100%. Totally agree
I hadn't thought about the line between "not wanting to play against X" and "X becoming banned" being related to things besides game mechanics. It's a very interesting line of thought, glad you brought it up.
Leyline of Resonance got banned in BO1 Standard because it's unfun, well it's unfun having to deal with Marvel shit.
Yes, and yet for some reason some will tell you that you're not allowed to complain about that
I prefer the phrase, vote with your wallet. if you keep buying the same things, wotc won't change
Oh yeah, 100% But I like to think community feedback plays a role in it too. They know when we'r unhappy. Now whether they care of course...
I personally am starting to think after beeing told 'This product isn't for you' that this game isn't for me
If it all product then it isn't. But the point of the phrase is that your complaining about specific sets.
There's only so often you can be told "This isn't for you" and it seems to be being said about more and more sets
Thanks for this. Very well articulated and thought out, and was helpful to solidify how I feel about the state of the game.
You're more than welcome, it's what I'm here for