General Companions, Yay or nay?

shamizy

shamizy

Onderzeeboot said:
Now, let's go off on a completely unrelated tangent. F.I.R.E. That's right, I just said it, completely unrelated. Now, this is a bit of a hyperbole, since companion was undoubtedly doctored up as a "fun" mechanic, based on the fact that multiple formats that impose restrictions on deckbuilding, Commander chief among them, have proven very popular for various stretches of time. However, by far the most important aspect of the F.I.R.E. design philosophy is lowering the gap in power between rares and lower rarities. Of course I would love it if they tested their shit a bit better too, some of the mistakes of the past years have been glaringly obvious just by glancing sideways at the card in question, but F.I.R.E. is not at fault here, I believe, seeing as we have had problems with design and development mistakes escaping into Standard before War of the Spark (which was the first set fully embracing F.I.R.E.'s principles). Anyway, I applaud this direction of "raising the floor" (to quote a mothership article). Even though they were already raising the floor before F.I.R.E. was a thing in my opinion, I hope they continue to do so, so I can keep including sweet commons and uncommons in my cube.
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I think FIRE is an issue if it's what allows for format-warping cards to escape notice at lower rarities in the interest of "fun". I'm talking cards like Veil of Summer or Arcum's Astrolabe where they didn't understand the potential impacts of what could happen in other formats. I don't think it's right to highlight lowering the gap in power level between rares and lower rarities as a positive and ignore the negative that this also means that marquee cards needs to be pushed to sell sets. I think that's exactly what has happened with very pushed rares and mythics in the last year that have had major impacts across formats. There has been a major trend towards printing cards that generate maximum value when played by the active player to avoid the feelbads of being answered by the opponent. I don't think that's good game design at all.

If everything were designed ala Dominaria with stronger than usual uncommons + keeping the power of rares in check things would be fine, but that isn't the case right now.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
shamizy said:
I think FIRE is an issue if it's what allows for format-warping cards to escape notice at lower rarities in the interest of "fun".
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Let's take a look at Standard bannings in the last few years and see if FIRE did this.


2017-01: Emrakul, the Promised End, Smuggler's Copter, and Reflector Mage
2017-04: Felidar Sovereign
2017-06: Aetherworks Marvel
2018-01: Attune with Aether, Rogue Refiner, Ramunap Ruins, and Rampaging Ferocidon
2019-01: First set fully embracing FIRE design enters standard (WAR)
2019-10: Field of the Dead
2019-11: Oko, Thief of Crowns, Once Upon a Time, and Veil of Summer

So, in the last ~3.5 years, 13 cards were banned in Standard, 6 of which were Common or Uncommon. Of those Commons and Uncommons, one was from a set using FIRE.

Looking back at the Standard bans in the past few years, and comparing pre-FIRE bans and post-FIRE bans, I really don't think it's fair to blame the "raising the floor"-principle of FIRE for the fuck-ups, and this impression holds if you look at other formats. Arcum's Astrolabe is the only other post-FIRE common that got banned somewhere, and it got banned in a format that isn't tested much, if at all. And sure, we've got two or three sets to go (depending on whether that Commander Draft set counts), but so far the batting average for FIRE sets hasn't been too bad, despite all the fuss about Field, Oko, and companions, and a higher floor for commons and uncommons definitely hasn't been the core of the problem imho.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Oh I'm not saying that FIRE is to blame for Standard being terrible in the last few years or even that raising the floor has been the main issue; R&D has had issues with Standard every since 2017. My view is that FIRE has lead to an R&D process where they feel the need to push cards to reach a certain power level across all rarities, not just commons and uncommons. This leads to more powerful playables at lower rarities which is great for cube designers and promotes greater interest in Limited, but on the flipside they need to push the chase cards at higher rarities even more to widen the gap and sell cards. This is what leads to efficient all-in-one packages for individual cards that become mainstays (Sidenote: This is also a major issue with their made for EDH commanders in recent years). The core concepts are based on fulfilling the gameplay experience of the player using these cards while ignoring the adverse effects on the opponent's end in regards to interaction. It's the only explanation I can think of for the variety of cards that have warped multiple formats in the last year. The other issue is that they straight up don't test for formats other than Standard and Limited the majority of the time which has always felt like a major oversight. The combination of the two has led to the most tumultuous stretch for eternal formats in the last decade and I think we're definitely seeing the fallout right now.

I also don't think Standard bannings are the best litmus test for the fallout of this design philosophy.

Arcum's Astrolabe made it such that fixing for colors was trivial in Legacy for a period of time, especially alongside Wrenn and Six. You could easily get around the limitations of strict land hate like Blood Moon or destruction like Wasteland by using it as a filter to get the colors you needed. I don't know what Legacy looked like post bannings since I don't follow it too closely and things have since shifted to Lurrus or bust, but my friends who do play the format did mention how Astrolabe has been an issue. For Modern, however, it's been a free-roll in Urza decks by giving greater consistency with 4 maindeck-able cantrips, some fodder for Whir of Invention, being a Mox Sapphire with Urza out, and giving you a way to fix mana for splash cards like Assassin's Trophy out the SB. The absolute worst case is that cantrips you for the average rate of one mana .

Veil of Summer is a much bigger problem and has become a SB staple in just about every Modern deck playing green because of how obscenely swing-y it is. You're pretty much at the point where you're handicapping yourself if you're trying to play targeted discard or countermagic in your decks of choice. The card just does it all for minimal investment.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
shamizy said:
R&D has had issues with Standard every since 2017. My view is that FIRE has lead to an R&D process where they feel the need to push cards to reach a certain power level across all rarities, not just commons and uncommons.
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See, we agree on the first point, but I still don't get how you get from A to B, as it were. FIRE didn't exist in 2017. It wasn't even around for most of the sets that got released in 2018. As Dave Humpherys details in one of articles (source), the design philosophy got introduced during month 11 of War of the Spark design, and led to quite a few changes late in design for that set. War of the Spark was released in May of 2019. Bryan Hawley explains in one of his articles (source) how, before the introduction of FIRE, they were powering down the power level of sets in an effort to make more cards matter, but this led to the unforeseen side effect of cards that missed on power level warping standard, simply because there wasn't a lot of competition as the rest of environment was deliberately of a lower power level (Smuggler's Copter and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar are named specifically). So, yes, they did raise the power level of rares/mythics, but not exactly because of FIRE. It's just that FIRE enables WotC to achieve the same goal of making more cards matter (in Standard at least) as powering down sets does, without the downside of releasing relatively boring sets with a few outliers that warp the meta. This enabled WotC to revert their conscious effort to power down Standard-legal sets.

Interestingly, the article also goes into some of the flaws of FIRE as it was initially implemented, and incidentally, Field of the Dead may be an example of what you consider the big downside of FIRE design. For WotC, though, that card was a design lesson, an indication of how FIRE needs to be adapted to better achieve their goals. Oko, on the other hand, is just clearly a development goof up, Bryan admits that they simply lost sight of the raw power level of the card while they were busy tweaking costs and effects of the card. Regrettable, but that happens every now and then. They did say that Oko and Teferi taught them they need to be more careful with three mana walkers, especially ones that invalidate an entire category of cards.

Anyway, my point is, FIRE is still relatively new. WotC's current bad track record in Standard spans several years by now, and started way before FIRE was a thing. You can't just blame their new design philosophy for everything they fucked up since 2017. You keep focusing on individual examples of why FIRE is a mistake (according to you), without looking at the whole picture. I believe the string of bans that has plagued MtG since 2017 is more indicative of another flaw in MtG's design & development cycle; WotC is bad at playtesting their product. They did address that problem after the Saheeli + Felidar Sovereign combo was missed by introducing the Play Design team, but as Bryan's article shows, Play Design is very much still learning. And, as Matt Sperling predicted (source) and time has since shown, having a Play Design team doesn't guarantee nothing will ever need to be banned again. It's a work in progress, and as Play Design gets more experienced and WotC as a whole gets more comfortable with the FIRE philosophy, I expect we will eventually see fewer cards banned again. Give them some credit though, it's a complex job that gets infinitely easier with hindsight. As a software tester I can attest to the fact that finding bugs isn't hard, but finding every bug is near impossible, given limited time and budget. Inevitably, bugs will slip through the cracks, and end up in your final product, where they will (also) inevitably be found by customers who wonder how the heck we missed those bugs. To a Magic community consisting of millions of players, glaring mistakes like Oko might be obvious, but I can actually relate to how a small group of developers and (play)testers were able to miss that fact.

PS. That said, I still think companions, as printed, are a clear and regrettable mistake.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Oh that's my bad, I wasn't trying to say that FIRE is to blame for issues since 2017. I had moved over that section from a different part of that reply before posting to avoid repeating myself, might have been a little confusing. Those were entirely other problems in R&D stemming from a lack of foresight in introducing checks and balances within formats.

Since War of the Spark, however, I do think Magic has been in a very bad position across multiple formats. I also work in software (in healthcare) and it's definitely difficult to pinpoint all possible flaws, so I can't blame them for that. What bothers me is whiffing on the handful of pushed cards in a given set when 85% is already draft chaff. There's a very small fraction of cards in any given Standard set that are playable in a competitive setting, that card pool is already fairly limited on purpose to sell packs.

Like you said, they're probably just bad at playtesting in general. I remember reading some FFL articles and being very confused by what they were trying to do being cute with cards and just ignoring powerful interactions altogether. It's just a really bad look for people whose jobs are based around this card game 40 hours a week. I see the few outliers warping the meta as a MUCH larger problem than a powered down set due to the detrimental effects of having to correct a problem with bannings. How are players supposed to feel safe putting their money into a game and building up a deck to play with if it can be wholly invalidated with a banned announcement? Bannings went from being boogeymen and tales of Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor during Cawblade to janky stuff like Lay of the Land with energy or a pushed Wistful Selkie. They really just need to step back and evaluate their process as a whole because it's just not working.

We'll see what happens, but I'm not too optimistic for the immediate future of the game. You can't just keep on missing things this often or egregiously and trying to course correct with bans. That destroys consumer confidence. It definitely has for me to the point where I just pick up a few things for Cube and EDH and call it a day. They were inept at tertiary aspects of the game for a long time, but the game was usually good enough to stand up on its own merits. Right now? I'd say no.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, I definitely feel you on the "regular bans destroy consumer confidence" part. Trying to stay competitive in paper constructed has been... trying, these past few years. If you want to win, ideally you have to buy into the best deck, but since 2017, this has been a rather risky proposition. Investing in a deck that will not hold its monetary value if a key card is banned is not where you want to be financially, and bannings have been frighteningly common since 2017. Now, I think Standard (and other formats) have still been better off by all of these bannings, but the number of bannings needed has not been pretty.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I think the problem with Magic design is a combination of several factors, many of which have no easy solution. I do think there are two underlying issues:

1) The minimization of "Negative player experiences" being taken too far.
2) The push for more "fun, exciting, inviting cards", which inevitably means powerful and warping.

The problem is that, what players report as being most fun or least fun is often at odds with good game design. People have more fun winning than losing. They do not like their big flashy spells being countered or blown up or otherwise stopped. Players want to have the power, but not have anyone wield it against them.

Wizards has tried to address this contradiction by pushing for more ETB effects, making symmetrical effects single-sided and reducing the number of ways you can deal with your opponent bombs efficiently, like hexproof, high starting loyalties and weird protections. The idea is that you don't feel bad because you always "get something" in exchange. But that results in a increase of power level that is very hard to deal with!

--

Regarding cards like Narset, Baby Teferi and Nissa, I just think they actively ignore safety valves on their cool cards, namely planeswalkers. They wouldn't print City of Solitude or Defense Grid today, but since Teferi is a planeswalker and can theorically be dealt with, it's fine to have a one-sided City of Solitude that's also an Exclude
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
To be fair though, they also get a lot of it right. It's easy to piss on the mistakes they make, but as a whole, Magic is still an incredibly engaging game, and apart from Ixalan, which was a bit of a miss for me, recent sets haven't slowed my interest in the game. Then again, it's been over a decade since I last played Standard. For years now, I've been playing prereleases, Commander, and Cube exclusively, and having great fun doing so.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

Yeah, I should also note: Despite how warped it is, I really enjoy the dense gameplay of current standard. If the metagame weren't as focused on being Fires or beating Fires, it would actually be pretty solid.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Standard has been a mess since well-before 2017. Everything went to hell back in October of 2015 when Theros Block left standard and Battle for Zendikar rotated in. There hasn't been a truly great standard format since then, in my opinion. Guilds of Ravnica standard pre-Ravnica Allegiance was pretty well-balanced, but that format only had 4 real tier 1 decks (Izzet Drakes, Golgari Midrange, White/x Weenie, and Red Aggro) and did not feel particularly diverse. I preferred it to what followed, but it still never quite got back to Theros-Khans levels of goodness.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Had my first encounter with Lurrus in Draft. Incredibly frustrating. He just kept bring him back to bring nack his 2 drops and that annoying drain 2 scorpion.
 
sigh

sigh

TrainmasterGT said:
Standard has been a mess since well-before 2017. Everything went to hell back in October of 2015 when Theros Block left standard and Battle for Zendikar rotated in. There hasn't been a truly great standard format since then, in my opinion. Guilds of Ravnica standard pre-Ravnica Allegiance was pretty well-balanced, but that format only had 4 real tier 1 decks (Izzet Drakes, Golgari Midrange, White/x Weenie, and Red Aggro) and did not feel particularly diverse. I preferred it to what followed, but it still never quite got back to Theros-Khans levels of goodness.
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This is pretty much what I subconsciously ended up feeling/doing. I played standard for a long time, pretty much exactly until BFZ rotated in, at which point I quickly tailed off on standard play and haven't gone back since.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Pulled a few things from his video

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His definition of a horrible mechanic:
"It needs to have a hugely detrimental impact on competitive Magic."
"Mechanics that have a lot of bannings."
"They make people stop showing up to Friday Night Magics, Magic Fests or Grand Prixs."
= "They greatly harm tournament level Magic."

How does Companions fare in this matter:
-- There have been no paper Magic tournament with them yet. On digital they are in 70 % of Standard decks.
-- 0 of them are banned. Many times in MtG history we have seen emergency bans from cards that got released into Standard and the other formats. Wizards chose to not do that here with the Companions so they already survived the first banning round.
-- No FNM, MF or GP have been hosted yet.
-- There are no statistical evidence for Companions greatly harming tournament level Magic (yet)

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He talk about the power level of a single card or a couple of cards doesn't make the mechanic bad. This is a very good argument and the same I made about Ikoria's Companion mechanics in the Ikoria thread. Some Companions are not strong cards and some are very strong. That means the mechanic is fine but the numbers are wrong.

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He talks about statistic data, which I like but he draws the wrong conclusions. Or seal away important arguments.
- He claims 100 % of the Companion cards are stables and I disagree. I don't believe Lutri, Umori, Zirda, Kaheera, Keruga or Jegantha are stables as of May 16'th of 2020. I also don't think Gyruda is anymore. Yorion, Lurrus and Obosh are king, queen and prince right now.

He compares the 10 rare Companions with all the rare, uncommon and common Dredge and Phyrexian mana cards. This seems like an unfair comparison since we all know rare cards tend to be more powerful than uncommon and common cards on average. He only looks for amount of bannings, stables and hit rate. Apples to oranges. The numbers don't favor if he subtract all the common and uncommon cards from the other mechanics like Dredge and Phyrexian mana which he says are his top 2 worse.

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He then makes a good point that everyone has also concluded a long time ago: The companion is an extra card in hand. "They are starting with 8 cards in hand and you are starting with 7." He doesn't mention the deck requirements to gain that extra value like "Your starting deck contains only cards with even converted mana cost.", the fact that opponent will know what is coming for him long before you would normally reveal your strategy and the fact that your opponent knows you can't have a Negate if he has a Keruga revealed as a Companion.

However he adds that a Companion can be worth several cards if it gains more value than just being a card. Like Yorion can make you draw an extra card if it flickers a Omen of the Sea, Lurrus can be worth an extra card if you cast a small dude from the graveyard. Etc. This logic is.. correct.. but it also applies to all other cards then. So his "They are actually starting with 9 cards, 10 cards, 11 cards.." doesn't apply any more to Companions as it does to starting with a Divination in hand.

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Edit:
My personal bias conclusion: There is something for everyone in this game. Some people like Seth enjoy cards like Thoughtseize and Lightning Bolt that are terrible answers to the Companions. Some people like counterspells, aggro decks, combo decks etc. Some people are Spikey competitors and some are kitchen table Johnnys. Some people will like to play with and against Companions and some people don't. We all share the love for the game. For a cube forum like this one we are blessed with designing our own environments so we can simply choose to not include them into our cubes if we so desire. Or we can create environments tailored for them. They are perfect for my cube. Enjoy <3
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

I really love the design on a good chunk of the companions, but I'll admit that I almost exclusively play limited these days and they are very strong but not 100% busted format warping like they seem to be in constructed formats. My solution is to run the cool ones and say to people, "By the way, Companion is banned" when we sit down to draft (not that I could get people together to draft even before the Covid-pocalypse). But Lurrus and Yorion are perfect signposts for what I want their guilds to be doing, Gyruda and Obosh are perfect control or aggro top ends respectively, and Zirda is a neat combo piece that Boros cards don't usually get to be. These cards are all fine if you just put them in your deck like regular Magic cards, and they don't just start in your hand for free. It's the mechanic that sucks, the cards themselves are cool.
 
Felipe Budinich

Felipe Budinich

Peter LaCara said:
I really love the design on a good chunk of the companions, but I'll admit that I almost exclusively play limited these days and they are very strong but not 100% busted format warping like they seem to be in constructed formats.
Click to expand...


Agree. Lurrus plays pretty fairly, and it's quite a feat to draft a deck around its companion restriction (maybe it'll be easier on my cube than in Ikoria limited, but even then, it's something you can only do if you got very lucky or if it was your p1p1). Lutri is way more busted at it has no real deckbuilding restriction.
 
Velrun

Velrun

So they all 10 dodged Standard again.

9/10 dodged Vintage.
8/10 dodged Legacy
10/10 dodged Modern
10/10 dodged Pioneer
10/10 dodged Historic

It won’t last forever because more will be banned in several formats. For competitive Magic I wish they would be toned down a little bit. For my cube it’s a home run wuhuuu! :D
 
shamizy

shamizy

I hope they don't wait too long to take action in Standard and Modern. No one is going to be playing in paper for a long time, but it would be super scummy to just let those formats flounder for months just to sell packs before taking action. I'm pretty sure this is exactly what's going to happen though.
 
Velrun

Velrun

It very well might be. I also suspect the cards to stay legal for sales reasons and then later get banned.

Just remember Memory Jar was banned before it was released. This was doing the combo winter and we will probably never seen anything like it again.
 
Felipe Budinich

Felipe Budinich

The simplest way to fix the 8th card problem is having to replace a card drawn with the companion.

"If you would draw a card you may put a companion from outside the game in your hand instead" or something along those lines.
 
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