Dan_Felder

It seems like you're determined to hunt for the exceptions I already said exist, rather than look at the trends. Delve as a mechanic is easier to exploit in older formats and so, like Mental Misstep, was unusually powerful in those formats. It's not an example of overall power creep, the enablers for graveyard strategies in legacy are more powerful and thus synergize better with cards that use the graveyard as a cost.

Things will occassionally synergize with cards in larger formats in ways they don't in smaller ones. That's one of the key reasons why the power levels of larger formats get higher over time due to more combinatorial options.

As for pot of greed, this is why I didn't compare to MTG's power 9 - pot of greed is in a similar space. I instead compared to cards that weren't early mistakes of the game but rather existed as staple cards for many years after. Counterspell was still being printed in 7th edition, in 2001. Lightning Bolt was reprinted in 2011 int...

Mirror Force is one of the great examples. It used to be one of the most powerful cards around, and now it's unlimited and barely used; along with most defensive "protect you from attack" traps - which used to be a significant staple of the game. Magic Cylinder, Sakaretsu Armor, etc.

Another example is Call of the Haunted - also unlimited these days when its close spell equivalent Premature Burial is Forbidden (banned, to those reading this unfamiliar with yugioh terminology). Call of the Haunted requiring a turn to set up is such a drawback now it's shrug-worthy but the same base effect with a lifepoint cost on a spell is bannable. The game's speed has increased that much over time. Premature Burial was always better than Call of the Haunted, but Call of the Haunted used to be a very playable card.

Some trap effects are so powerful and unique they've never been replicated by better spells (at least nothing that's stayed unbanned) or hand-traps, and thus are still w...

In MTG we also went from Counterspell to Cancel, and from Lightning Bolt to Searing Spear (both examples of cheaper spells getting rotated out and replaced with weaker versions that cost more mana). We went from Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargin to Phyrexian Arena. There are countless other examples.

Magic's creatures started as like 2/10 in power and many of its non-creatues started as like 11/10 in power. Creatures have gotten stronger over time, non-creatures have gotten weaker over time. If you look at the decklists in legacy and vintage formats, this is very easy to see; as most of the creatures in these decks are newer and most of the non-creatures are older. There are exceptions to both of course, espescially with some older tribe-oriented decks that don't see quite as much modern support, but the trend is pretty consistent.

If you take the strongest standard-legal decks from today and play it against the strongest standard-legal decks from older eras of MTG...

Why should the amount of time matter? I'm comparing how powerful the modern game is now to how powerful it was at launch. That's power creep.

It kind of seems like you're just looking to argue. If you don't agree that yugioh has significantly gone up in power to make new cards impact the meta, okay. I'll have to disagree.

... The deck you linked has multiple hand-traps and an engine specifically based around using cards to set traps from the hand or deck and activate them within the same turn, bypassing the normal limits of traps that I was mentioning above. You're providing a perfect example of my point.

The very first card in the decklist is Labyrnth Cooclock which you can discard to specifically do this.

The second and third cards let you discard them to set an archetype-relevant card from your hand OR deck onto the feld, searching for the trap of your choice.

Put them together, and you aren't just doing what I said about activating the trap from your hand - you can actually activate traps before you even draw them, directly from the deck.

This is a great example of what modern...

Maybe they just have massive power creep idk

They do. It's unbelievable the power level boost in the game now. While playing a single 1900 attack monters used to be powerful, now it's easy to special summon multiple much larger monsters with multiple negates or other effects built in within a single turn.

This is why most traps are unplayable in the meta unless you can activate them from the hand, because you can't afford to wait a turn to set them. Some folks love it, some prefer older formats, but everyone agrees the power creep is truly staggering.

EDIT - I was speaking in generalities, some traps are still so powerful they're worth the cost of being very slow, but there is a significant emphasis on hand-traps and spell cards or other ways to activate cards the turn you play them. Many classic traps or even types of traps have been power-crept out: with cards like Mirror Force and Call of the Haunted no longer being very popular...

The general trick with that kind of signposting is we now have the additional problem of trying to get players to understand why the eye keeps changing color or shape. Solutions like this are often great for expert players that understand all the special things but the added visual confusion actually makes things MORE confusing for other players. It’s counterintuitive but often proven time and time again in experiments.

Additionally, many of the times the eye would be uncertain are based on hidden information, meaning the eye has to default to the uncertain state every time you play against lurk, or the stays uncertain as long as there’s 1 flash bomb or shroom anywhere in your deck, etc.

It might still be a good idea but there are a lot of surprising catches with it. There are few perfect solutions in design. That’s what makes it so fun to try and figure out the right trade offs.

Thanks. Glad to hear it. :)

Designers are humans and can disagree on what a region identity should be, what should be a hard wall and what shouldn’t. Some might think that a region should never be able to heal no matter what, even if one of their champions has a healing theme in League of Legends or their lore. Some might believe that region should be able to heal a little bit if there’s a good reason and they pay some big cost, or it’s restricted to a specific archetype (meaning decks not using that archetype in the region couldn’t heal, only that one archetype could).

Things can change too as we experiment and learn from player feedback, or discover new opportunities for design space.

We do align on what the current approach is of course, and there are always going to be ongoing discussions about whether changes should be made. Considering different points of view and discussing them as a team is valuable.

"The fact they keep mentioning a color pie that is fairly ambiguous at the moment also just makes it hard to trust any of this in good faith because without knowing what it is, they can just make it up as they go (like they seemed to cherry pick Zoe out not because of the invoking, but because she's an elusive beater)[...] Really only ended up leaving more questions unanswered and creating a lot of new questions."

So, I'm a big proponent of communicating with players as much as we can about our current thinking. Bear in mind we often only have a limited time to do so, while single design meetings discussing design theory and decisions often take 2 hours multiple times a week, so there's only so much we can ever communicate efficiently.

There's always going to be gaps and seeming contradictions because there are dozens of factors that go into every design decision, it's never all 1 or nothing. There are always huge and surprising ripple eff...

Also, sometimes card designers disagree on stuff. Designers aren't a hivemind. This even affects things you might not expect, like UI elements such as the oracle eye.

Some designers believe the oracle eye should never "lie" - meaning it never shows a result that won't necessarily happen. They believe if a player uses it to preview the future board state, that board state should always be true.

However, other designers are nervous about this because following that rule would mean we can't do a LOT of designs. For example, if a card says, "When you draw a spell, give me +1|+1". If this is combined with units that draw a card when they strike in combat, the oracle eye can't tell you if the card you're about to draw is a spell. It could result in situations where the oracle eye says that you'll survive at 1 health from this attacking unit, but in reality the opponent draws a spell and you die.

Some designers think we should minimize any effects that can cause th...

Did you get eternal cards from region roads as a brand new player? That shouldn’t be happening. If you see a brand new player experience that please send a bug report. The starting decks from the prologue are still not standard legal yet (we’re going to make them give standard legal cards in the future) but the region road rewards for brand new players should be.

Not intentionally, though Reddit sometimes serves posts there to me. We try not to look at custom cards because it’s legally weird.

"He may be half shark, but he's ALL man."

PEAS to Freljord. PEAS.

She likes frozen peas.

We already talked a bunch about it in the past in general philosophy and official communication from another designer that was deeply involved in the decisions is on the way.

Thresh with any relics that have an on summon effect laughs at the Chronicle of Ruin challenges. Guardian's Orb is particularly funny on that one, but everfrost and anything similar works too. Whenever Thresh is revived he counts as a new copy for the purpose of his level 2 effect by the way, so he can summon a champion on attack every time. Use your rerolls to get Galio or something similar, and put items on your champion or other items with similar "on summon" effects (like: "When I'm summoned, restore health to your nexus equal to my cost").

You don't need to use thresh but he's very effective due to his star power, last breath units, and level 2 ability. Otherwise, any champion with good "on summon" effects or relics works pretty well.

Yep, we announced there's going to be a way. Working on it.

They were.

Before they were eradicated.

He never stopped being a winner :)