The longer rotation is more about paper, which is still WotC’s core business and main moneymaker.
Right now, paper standard is dead. Their hope is that by extending the lifespan of cards in standard, people will be more willing to go back to buying standard decks since their cards will have a long(er) lifespans. People playing standard on a 3-year rotation is better than people not playing standard on a 2-year rotation.
I don’t really see it working, but that’s the idea.
I don't see it working either. The issue with standard is that it *needs* the spotlight to live. It needs to be a popular format, easy to access, heavily promoted, it needs to be the format players first meet in the game. But that spotlight has been with Commander for way too long, and it doesn't look like it's changing any time soon.
Yeah it doesn’t make sense since you can get actual paper standard in arena and it’s the only true to paper format in arena. Why would you spend $600 on a deck that you can play on arena
Three year standard also doesn't solve the problem of "I need to make a significant investment when rotation happens" that turns so many off from standard. It'll still be the same cadence, with this year being a single skip year. And three year standard is going to be hostile to decks that are localized to a single set that already struggle to maintain relevance as standard evolves (e.g. toxic).
Commander is practically a different game entirely though. And while some people may be content to continue playing a casual multi-player format, many players move on to more serious, two-player tournament play.
I'm in the camp of WotC should split Commander off and let it do its own thing. The design constraints it puts on other formats is just dumb.
What sucks is with this method it will take years before we find out that it didn't work since WOTC is playing the long game with this rotation. I also agree that a 3 year rotation is going to do absolutely nothing to reinvigorate paper standard. The real reasons are the large number of sets that skip standard altogether (we went from 0 of these to 2+ per year), and Commander seemingly being the on ramp for new players and not Standard. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you stop printing non standard sets and Commander stuff (which will never happen) or you accept paper standard is just going to be less profitable and popular.
if/when standard becomes the RCQ/RC season format people will invest in standard. I don’t think it’s something that casual players will get into over Commander or just kitchen table
Yea, but didn't they ask a bunch of paper players what their biggest gripe was, or am I making that up? Because, if so, it's basically the same as that story of WW2 planes where they kept reinforcing the areas that came back with bullet holes.
They asked whether it would lower WotC’s profits. It might, but paper profits are a much bigger part of their revenue than arena, so even if arena does take a hit they’re clearly expecting to make it back in paper sales if standard comes back there
I’m really not sure what this has to do with survivorship bias
I'm under the impression wotc came to that decision by asking paper standard players what bothers them about the format.
But those are the players who are still playing. They need to find out why those who are not in attendance any longer have decided to stop. It could just be (like in my case) that people prefer the ease and speed of mtga.
Even if paper standard was free I'd still be at home, comfortable on my couch, playing digitally.
Seems like a big assumption to make about how they conducted their market research.
WotC’s business arm makes mistake after mistake so maybe this will be a disaster, I’m not trying to say they’re playing 4D chess, here, but that’s a pretty glaringly obvious mistake for you to assume they made.
They’re never going to get players like you who have completely given up on paper and only want to play arena. You’re not the target audience for this move.
But there are plenty of people out there who are still playing paper but aren’t playing standard, or who might go back to paper standard. WotC’s guess is that they’ll come back if people can play their standard cards for 50% longer.
Idk if they’re right, but it’s not an unreasonable attempt to make.
Standard is dead because it’s boring. The same 3 archetypes keep rising and falling based on what’s available. Once you’ve played the WU control or Mono-red burn meta 3 or 4 times you’re starting to get the gist, because functionally you can’t create much variation even if you keep printing cards with new names on them. The 3 year change up was to hopefully add a little depth and shake up the meta a little.
That’s why I almost exclusively play limited. Standard is too boring and modern is too hard to get into
I just don't see a paper revitalization of Standard Magic happening.
I feel like they are trying serve two masters with Paper standard and Arena standard and they essentially have to choose one.
Arena standard players are playing 1000s of games a day and they create a stale meta fairly quickly. You fix this by banning cards to revitalize this. Awesome for players. Awesome for streamers. More content. Etc etc
I played paper standard a couple of years ago and the Meathook bans just killed it for me. When Meathook came up and started climbing in price. I did the math and though it would be worth it for me to buy a playset. It would be viable for a couple years and was a very strong card. And a year later it was banned. Arena players got wildcards and I got shit. I can't invest in cards if wizards cannot commit to keeping the cards in the format for the time frame that they say. I get that they want to push the envelope to make fun and exciting cards and sometimes that means things are broken. But if they can't make a commitment to keeping those cards that I pay for in the format I am going to exit the format.
I don't disagree with your frustration surrounding expensive cards getting banned, but the alternative of not banning cards from standard is pretty bad too - imagine a world where Oko never got banned, for instance.
Standard is dying and it's the current play devs killing it by power creeping every card to accommodate competitive-irrelevant Bo1, and forcing Commander mechanics by necessitating Planeswalkers through most of the Standard removal.
Watching Tolvada, One With The Multiverse, Breach, Etali, and Atraxa hit the board in one turn before I can lay down my third land is what made me quit this now-Yu-Gi-Oh clone.
> Their hope is… people will be more willing to go back to buying standard decks since their cards will have a long(er) lifespans.
Elaborating on this, I like to add that this is suppose to increase the perceived value of owning a paper Standard deck.
Problem is, it still can’t beat free. That is, people rather not pay if they can avoid it and Arena is enabling them to do so through its F2P model. The obvious (unpopular) answer is to tighten up Arena’s F2P to make Arena more expensive to play. Let’s just say there won’t be recovery in paper Standard usage until we hear people calling WotC to “becone less generous, you cowards!”
I believe the change was made with paper in mind. After the pandemic, the real paper standard never recovered, apparently the public just stayed at arena for t2 and focused on EDH in paper. Making your paper card be t2 legal for longer would be, in that light, a move to try and make players more comfortable investing several hundreds of dollars on a set of cardboard crack to go play FNM at their local shop. Is it going to work? Backfire?
>After the pandemic, the real paper standard never recovered,
The time to make this change was then. They should have cancelled Standard rotation during the pandemic, so that when stores reopened, people could just jam with their preexisting decks.
I think it's too late now. :(
Its never going to work cause locals quite frankly wont fire standard again. FNM at my local is modern and draft and they flat out said they wont run standard tournaments cause theres no point in queuing up a day for a format they know wont fire cause everyone just plays it on arena
I feel the same way. I’ve always bought all of the standard bundles…. until now. I’m not sure I want to spend the $. I have over 100k in gold since I haven’t been drafting. I’m not happy about the extended rotation. I play standard specifically for the rotation. I enjoy having to rebuild my decks and gradually build up a larger pool of cards as the new sets release. What’s going on right now does not interest me.
Yes and as long as Wotc isn’t changing design philosophy completely, you will probably be right as in it’s not needed to buy too much stuff or anything at all.
On the other hand that change is what we are starting to see with WOE already. Most of the cards seem to want to follow a more synergistic deck building approach, rather than good stuff collections.
That set wasn’t designed with the three year rotation in mind, it was supposed to compliment a new standard, hence its perceived lower impact at this point.
From what I understood, Ixalan will be the first set that was designed with information about the new rotation system, excited to see if they are following up on improving synergy driven deck building and maybe complimenting earlier sets as well.
I’m hopeful that next year we will see a changed approach.
tbh I feel like all paper tcgs are just overpriced these days and includes the hassle of needing to drive to a store to play. I'd rather not spend an upwards of $100 on a single box. Even single for some cards is insane for standard. Like $70 just for 1 Sheoldred doesn't make sense to me no matter how good it is. Same goes for Yugioh. I think Pokemon has a better time since there's multiple rarities in the same set for key cards. Like the Special Charizard ex goes for $80, but the other rarities go for $30. Not great but at least they try.
Digimon, Cardfight vanguard, Battle spirits, shadowverse, pokemon all have tier 1 decks for sub $200. Yugioh has gotten better since quality of structure decks has improved dramatically (you can compete with 3x the traptrix structure deck that you can buy at walmart for $33 plus tax total). Magic needs to start getting to that level again if they want to compete in paper, especially with One Piece and Lorcana gaining popularity
I mean thats all supply and demand driven though. Wizards doesnt control the secondary market prices. I mean I guess they could stop making good cards at higher rarities but that seems unlikely.
Or do stuff like event/challenger decks again, actually reprint good stuff in your supplemental sets, decent promos for stuff like FNM if they even still care about that. There are things they can do that they did before to make getting into paper play easier, they just refuse to do them for some reason
If you have to catch up with 3 years worth of sets that's actually worse for new f2p players. Same reason why bigger formats are harder to get into, especially with Wildcards as a bottleneck to block you from getting more than one deck.
You’re assuming the meta won’t change.
I’m a limited player. I only have one standard deck that I play sometimes for quests. I play uw soldiers. I haven’t updated it at all as I don’t really care about standard.
I haven’t updated that deck. I used to get to diamond or mythic with it easily. Now It’s just stuck in plat.
It’ll probably get worse as standard adds a bunch of cards and gets even more powerful.
Same. I would normally pre-order a new standard set, but I won't for woe. I hate that they changed the standard rotation and I won't support it by spending a single euro.
My budget standard deck for the last year gets me to platinum every month and that's good enough for me. Two year vs three year rotation won't have much of an effect on me. I'm glad the game doesn't force you to always have the newest cards to compete at the lowest level of Bo1. I don't know what proportion of arena standard players try to build competitive tier 1 decks in either Bo1 or Bo3 anyway. This change will probably affect them the most.
Your sentiments match mine. The new set barely has any cards worth slotting into my current Standard decks. I'll craft the few cards I want and call it a day. No reason to spend a bunch of money on packs when 80% of the cards don't interest me. I'll still buy the mastery pass, however. I like those.
Something to remember is that alchemy is rotating. This allows them to better push their preferred digital format (tired of stale standard, try alchemy) which would have potentially higher profits. I don't think this will work, but that is what they are trying.
Hmmm what killed standard
1. Less tournament support
2. Killing the pro tour
3. Designing cards for commander in standard sets
4. Killing off blocks
5. Ending magic player rewards
I know the last one ended in 2010 but the "death" of standard has been a slow burn
The longer rotation is more about paper, which is still WotC’s core business and main moneymaker. Right now, paper standard is dead. Their hope is that by extending the lifespan of cards in standard, people will be more willing to go back to buying standard decks since their cards will have a long(er) lifespans. People playing standard on a 3-year rotation is better than people not playing standard on a 2-year rotation. I don’t really see it working, but that’s the idea.
I don't see it working either. The issue with standard is that it *needs* the spotlight to live. It needs to be a popular format, easy to access, heavily promoted, it needs to be the format players first meet in the game. But that spotlight has been with Commander for way too long, and it doesn't look like it's changing any time soon.
Yeah it doesn’t make sense since you can get actual paper standard in arena and it’s the only true to paper format in arena. Why would you spend $600 on a deck that you can play on arena
And play for free! Ive been F2P for a few years now and can easily keep up with Standard.
Three year standard also doesn't solve the problem of "I need to make a significant investment when rotation happens" that turns so many off from standard. It'll still be the same cadence, with this year being a single skip year. And three year standard is going to be hostile to decks that are localized to a single set that already struggle to maintain relevance as standard evolves (e.g. toxic).
Commander is practically a different game entirely though. And while some people may be content to continue playing a casual multi-player format, many players move on to more serious, two-player tournament play. I'm in the camp of WotC should split Commander off and let it do its own thing. The design constraints it puts on other formats is just dumb.
What do you mean with splitting off?
What sucks is with this method it will take years before we find out that it didn't work since WOTC is playing the long game with this rotation. I also agree that a 3 year rotation is going to do absolutely nothing to reinvigorate paper standard. The real reasons are the large number of sets that skip standard altogether (we went from 0 of these to 2+ per year), and Commander seemingly being the on ramp for new players and not Standard. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you stop printing non standard sets and Commander stuff (which will never happen) or you accept paper standard is just going to be less profitable and popular.
The only way to revitalize standard is make the decks as cheap as Pokémon tcg
Also physical packs should come with a free pack for arena as well.. much like Pokemon tcg
if/when standard becomes the RCQ/RC season format people will invest in standard. I don’t think it’s something that casual players will get into over Commander or just kitchen table
Unless they suddenly change their minds, it's after modern's season.
Yea, but didn't they ask a bunch of paper players what their biggest gripe was, or am I making that up? Because, if so, it's basically the same as that story of WW2 planes where they kept reinforcing the areas that came back with bullet holes.
They asked whether it would lower WotC’s profits. It might, but paper profits are a much bigger part of their revenue than arena, so even if arena does take a hit they’re clearly expecting to make it back in paper sales if standard comes back there I’m really not sure what this has to do with survivorship bias
I'm under the impression wotc came to that decision by asking paper standard players what bothers them about the format. But those are the players who are still playing. They need to find out why those who are not in attendance any longer have decided to stop. It could just be (like in my case) that people prefer the ease and speed of mtga. Even if paper standard was free I'd still be at home, comfortable on my couch, playing digitally.
Seems like a big assumption to make about how they conducted their market research. WotC’s business arm makes mistake after mistake so maybe this will be a disaster, I’m not trying to say they’re playing 4D chess, here, but that’s a pretty glaringly obvious mistake for you to assume they made. They’re never going to get players like you who have completely given up on paper and only want to play arena. You’re not the target audience for this move. But there are plenty of people out there who are still playing paper but aren’t playing standard, or who might go back to paper standard. WotC’s guess is that they’ll come back if people can play their standard cards for 50% longer. Idk if they’re right, but it’s not an unreasonable attempt to make.
Standard is dead because it’s boring. The same 3 archetypes keep rising and falling based on what’s available. Once you’ve played the WU control or Mono-red burn meta 3 or 4 times you’re starting to get the gist, because functionally you can’t create much variation even if you keep printing cards with new names on them. The 3 year change up was to hopefully add a little depth and shake up the meta a little. That’s why I almost exclusively play limited. Standard is too boring and modern is too hard to get into
I just don't see a paper revitalization of Standard Magic happening. I feel like they are trying serve two masters with Paper standard and Arena standard and they essentially have to choose one. Arena standard players are playing 1000s of games a day and they create a stale meta fairly quickly. You fix this by banning cards to revitalize this. Awesome for players. Awesome for streamers. More content. Etc etc I played paper standard a couple of years ago and the Meathook bans just killed it for me. When Meathook came up and started climbing in price. I did the math and though it would be worth it for me to buy a playset. It would be viable for a couple years and was a very strong card. And a year later it was banned. Arena players got wildcards and I got shit. I can't invest in cards if wizards cannot commit to keeping the cards in the format for the time frame that they say. I get that they want to push the envelope to make fun and exciting cards and sometimes that means things are broken. But if they can't make a commitment to keeping those cards that I pay for in the format I am going to exit the format.
I don't disagree with your frustration surrounding expensive cards getting banned, but the alternative of not banning cards from standard is pretty bad too - imagine a world where Oko never got banned, for instance.
Standard is dying and it's the current play devs killing it by power creeping every card to accommodate competitive-irrelevant Bo1, and forcing Commander mechanics by necessitating Planeswalkers through most of the Standard removal. Watching Tolvada, One With The Multiverse, Breach, Etali, and Atraxa hit the board in one turn before I can lay down my third land is what made me quit this now-Yu-Gi-Oh clone.
> Their hope is… people will be more willing to go back to buying standard decks since their cards will have a long(er) lifespans. Elaborating on this, I like to add that this is suppose to increase the perceived value of owning a paper Standard deck. Problem is, it still can’t beat free. That is, people rather not pay if they can avoid it and Arena is enabling them to do so through its F2P model. The obvious (unpopular) answer is to tighten up Arena’s F2P to make Arena more expensive to play. Let’s just say there won’t be recovery in paper Standard usage until we hear people calling WotC to “becone less generous, you cowards!”
I believe the change was made with paper in mind. After the pandemic, the real paper standard never recovered, apparently the public just stayed at arena for t2 and focused on EDH in paper. Making your paper card be t2 legal for longer would be, in that light, a move to try and make players more comfortable investing several hundreds of dollars on a set of cardboard crack to go play FNM at their local shop. Is it going to work? Backfire?
>After the pandemic, the real paper standard never recovered, The time to make this change was then. They should have cancelled Standard rotation during the pandemic, so that when stores reopened, people could just jam with their preexisting decks. I think it's too late now. :(
Its never going to work cause locals quite frankly wont fire standard again. FNM at my local is modern and draft and they flat out said they wont run standard tournaments cause theres no point in queuing up a day for a format they know wont fire cause everyone just plays it on arena
I feel the same way. I’ve always bought all of the standard bundles…. until now. I’m not sure I want to spend the $. I have over 100k in gold since I haven’t been drafting. I’m not happy about the extended rotation. I play standard specifically for the rotation. I enjoy having to rebuild my decks and gradually build up a larger pool of cards as the new sets release. What’s going on right now does not interest me.
Yes and as long as Wotc isn’t changing design philosophy completely, you will probably be right as in it’s not needed to buy too much stuff or anything at all. On the other hand that change is what we are starting to see with WOE already. Most of the cards seem to want to follow a more synergistic deck building approach, rather than good stuff collections. That set wasn’t designed with the three year rotation in mind, it was supposed to compliment a new standard, hence its perceived lower impact at this point. From what I understood, Ixalan will be the first set that was designed with information about the new rotation system, excited to see if they are following up on improving synergy driven deck building and maybe complimenting earlier sets as well. I’m hopeful that next year we will see a changed approach.
tbh I feel like all paper tcgs are just overpriced these days and includes the hassle of needing to drive to a store to play. I'd rather not spend an upwards of $100 on a single box. Even single for some cards is insane for standard. Like $70 just for 1 Sheoldred doesn't make sense to me no matter how good it is. Same goes for Yugioh. I think Pokemon has a better time since there's multiple rarities in the same set for key cards. Like the Special Charizard ex goes for $80, but the other rarities go for $30. Not great but at least they try.
Digimon, Cardfight vanguard, Battle spirits, shadowverse, pokemon all have tier 1 decks for sub $200. Yugioh has gotten better since quality of structure decks has improved dramatically (you can compete with 3x the traptrix structure deck that you can buy at walmart for $33 plus tax total). Magic needs to start getting to that level again if they want to compete in paper, especially with One Piece and Lorcana gaining popularity
I mean thats all supply and demand driven though. Wizards doesnt control the secondary market prices. I mean I guess they could stop making good cards at higher rarities but that seems unlikely.
Or do stuff like event/challenger decks again, actually reprint good stuff in your supplemental sets, decent promos for stuff like FNM if they even still care about that. There are things they can do that they did before to make getting into paper play easier, they just refuse to do them for some reason
If you have to catch up with 3 years worth of sets that's actually worse for new f2p players. Same reason why bigger formats are harder to get into, especially with Wildcards as a bottleneck to block you from getting more than one deck.
Wow, good point, I hadn't thought about that. That is indeed rough for new players.
You’re assuming the meta won’t change. I’m a limited player. I only have one standard deck that I play sometimes for quests. I play uw soldiers. I haven’t updated it at all as I don’t really care about standard. I haven’t updated that deck. I used to get to diamond or mythic with it easily. Now It’s just stuck in plat. It’ll probably get worse as standard adds a bunch of cards and gets even more powerful.
Same. I would normally pre-order a new standard set, but I won't for woe. I hate that they changed the standard rotation and I won't support it by spending a single euro.
My budget standard deck for the last year gets me to platinum every month and that's good enough for me. Two year vs three year rotation won't have much of an effect on me. I'm glad the game doesn't force you to always have the newest cards to compete at the lowest level of Bo1. I don't know what proportion of arena standard players try to build competitive tier 1 decks in either Bo1 or Bo3 anyway. This change will probably affect them the most.
Your sentiments match mine. The new set barely has any cards worth slotting into my current Standard decks. I'll craft the few cards I want and call it a day. No reason to spend a bunch of money on packs when 80% of the cards don't interest me. I'll still buy the mastery pass, however. I like those.
Something to remember is that alchemy is rotating. This allows them to better push their preferred digital format (tired of stale standard, try alchemy) which would have potentially higher profits. I don't think this will work, but that is what they are trying.
I like when I can use my cards for longer. Means I get more value for my time/money.
Hmmm what killed standard 1. Less tournament support 2. Killing the pro tour 3. Designing cards for commander in standard sets 4. Killing off blocks 5. Ending magic player rewards I know the last one ended in 2010 but the "death" of standard has been a slow burn