I like this idea, since it incorporates something that by its very nature is closely related to how these different identities are meant to interact with each other. If part of the identity is its weakness, then the feel of the match up between different strategies should be much easier to make a guess about and then compare with what's actually going on at the table. It gives us a tool to evaluate our designs with, since you have something that you can compare with and not just end up in speculation.
General [Design Discussion] Perfect Imbalance
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
I like this idea, since it incorporates something that by its very nature is closely related to how these different identities are meant to interact with each other. If part of the identity is its weakness, then the feel of the match up between different strategies should be much easier to make a guess about and then compare with what's actually going on at the table. It gives us a tool to evaluate our designs with, since you have something that you can compare with and not just end up in speculation.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yes, the actual descriptions being presented are reasonable, though the term "diversity" dosen't really feel right. By having weakness/strengh built into the core identity of how parts of the cube interact, it forces people to take into account the cube's negative and positive spaces either during the draft or in game. These sorts of interactions are easier to see with commons and uncommons, because the cards are designed to be inherently more simple compared to rares.
These relationships also apply to color pair identity, since you're using negative and positive space to cement certain identity relationships, and allow cards to coalesce at these identity points, which creates the themes, the decks, the matchups that you can than balance. The stronger these relationships become the harder it becomes to justify cuts and adds, and you end up with a finished cube.
In my first draft of the penny cube, I remarked how different it felt, because it was presenting a supply of reasonably powered cards, but instead of drafting around the good cards in the pack, or a collection of build arounds, the format was really asking you to draft around positive and negative space. This has added a lot of depth to the format, made it very hard to crack, and extended out the discovery phase extensively, perhaps even indefenantly, for some of my drafters.
I suspect that part of why this format feels like it has so much depth is because of how new it is. And I also suspect that traditional power max cubes felt similarly deep back in 2005 for the same reason and only feel shallow now because an entire community of smart people have had a decade to figure them out. I remember being blown away by all the interactions in my first cube (which had zero archetype support, a rubbish curve and was just basically a random collection of powerful and unbalanced cards).
In that vein, I still feel the best recipe for a rich cube experience is diversity and constant change. I understand wanting to have a finished product, but that eventually leads to stagnation no matter how well designed. If the only Magic set that ever got release was ABU, this game would have died many years ago. And not because that wasn't a really awesome set with tons of gameplay but because people figure things out and even the best games get stale after awhile.
On a related note, I've been listening to the Dune series on audiobook in my car to and from work and I see a parallel with cube design and prescience. The more you know about the future the more trapped by it you become. The same is true of cube design. The more you try and control the outcome (forcing archetypes, trying to manipulate these chains we are talking about), the less design space you actually create. Sometimes you are better off just putting some ingredients in the pot and seeing what people make out of it. Then discard what failed and replace it with new ingredients. In this way, you may have ups and downs but it should be positive overall and it should never get boring.
My best experiences with cube will always be the unexpected ones. Things I could not have designed for. While I am on team "nerf good stuff", I fully believe there has to be enough of those types of cards so that you can let interesting designs happen organically. And as the old adage says, "everything in moderation". Lower curve is good. Making the curve stupid low probably isn't. Some good stuff cards are good. All good stuff cards probably isn't. Some high pick power cards are good, but too high power is warping. And on and on.
I don't agree to this at all. You might have some kind of point, but I think Grillo pointed it out correctly that power max cubes have less room for this kind of dynamic due to the very nature of the cards. When a single card is more complex it makes these interactions much less apparent to the point arguable they're not even there. Lower power makes each card more one dimensional and thus makes these interactions and relationships more black on white.
That's a possibility. It can also lead to a designer depression where choices feel arbitrary and thoughtless.
You might not disagree with me as much as you think. Because in my mind there is a pretty large gap in power between power max cubes from 2005 and those from 2015. Today, every single card is well above curve (creature and non-creature) to the point where it feels stifled to me - you can't even find room to run all the above curve cards.
One of the things that worked in our favor back when cube was young was the fact that you were still forced to run lower power cards at virtually every CC ("low power" comparatively speaking) to fill up a 360 cube. Back in those days, we were cubing Thieving Magpie and gushing about how great it was. Cubes from 2005 were the Penny Pincher cube with 15 broken cards added to it (jitte, swords, balance, etc.). So all this depth and possibility existed back then but for different reasons.
Look at it this way, would there be an entire community of people playing cube today if it started as stale and shallow as some are suggesting mainstream power max cube design is?
I'm not against the message of this thread, I just don't fully agree with the methods. I've been a big proponent of de-powering cube and I see nothing but positive side effects from doing it. But that is different than trying to force all these balancing mechanics which I feel is borderline impossible in a game as complex as Magic. Any sense that people feel they are doing this with a significant level of control IMO is nothing more than confirmation bias.
The game of Magic has enough random elements and is of a high enough complexity level that it can give you whatever experience you are seeking if you focus on only the things you want to see.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The problem with this is argument though is that it just ends up being a self-imposed intellectual dead end.
Magic formats go stale because they are built to be a consumable experience to facilitate wotc's business model. Despite this, There are examples from eternal formats (legacy) of formats that provide balanced enjoyable gameplay, and have survived and flourished beyond the format's discovery phase.
But I shouldn't haven to point out the vast difference between what each of us is doing with our own cubes and the legacy format as a whole. Unless you have hired a staff of people to run iterations of your cube 40 hours a week for months, I see no way you can get to a place where you are truly in possession of enough data. That's my fundamental problem with this approach. You can theory craft how guys will pick edicts to combat hexproof dominate meta and it evolves from there, but if I've learned anything from my Magic group it's that they are constantly not doing what I expect them to (and that is great most of the time so why am I fighting it)?
For the average cube manager posting on this site who plays Magic with friends once a month or whatever, their time is probably better spent making general improvements to their cube that is likely to increase depth and playability. Simple things like lowering the curve and removing format warping cards. Maybe dialing back narrow support cards (advice I need to take myself).
Now it's entirely possible I'm just not able to keep up with the exchanges happening now and at this point I need to just bow out of the thread. To me though, a lot of where this conversation has gone feels like a design version of magical Christmas land.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Thats fine, but its important to recognize that this perspective is a choice on your part, and dosen't recognize what is or what might be. That notion of needing a full time team of testers to produce a stable format isn't actually based on anything but conjuecture, as is suggesting that my format is like the 2005 cube formats, or that its impossible to produce a stable yet fun magic format.
I'm coming from an empirical rather than a theortical space, and this represents a form of potential design progress, if it can be explored. Thats really all that I am looking to do.
Also, dune is great.
I had read the first Dune book long ago, and of course I saw the movie and then the scifi channel miniseries (which I liked). I got all the audio books off eBay for pretty cheap and they are really well narrated. And I love the direction the story is going (I'm almost done with Children of Dune which is where my knowledge of the story ends).
Anyway, the Penny Pincher cube is one I've thought very hard about building and playing. I suspect it's very different from any cube I've played. Vastly different most likely. Even my own cube (which is a walker free rare cube with self imposed power restrictions) plays differently enough that I post in the forums and sometimes scratch my head at comments made regarding cards or how things work in the game that are just completely different from what I see regularly. It makes it hard to relate at times.
I know you have empirical evidence that is pointing you down this path. I'm not dismissing that. But I'm also not just arguing from a theory craft perspective. A lot of my current opinions on this subject come from my own cubing evolution, and while I most likely have less empirical data than you I'm not just making stuff up over here. I can tell you that my group is not sophisticated enough to see some of what I'm doing let alone what you are trying to do, and so much of the influence we believe we have over how our environment works doesn't actually translate to the table. Maybe it would if we have a lot of traffic with our cubes and outside people analyzing the evolving meta (and maybe you do), but I don't believe most people posting here fall into that bucket. It's FNM with half a dozen people and any type of format solving is happening at a snails pace (if at all).
Anyway, the Penny Pincher cube is one I've thought very hard about building and playing. I suspect it's very different from any cube I've played. Vastly different most likely. Even my own cube (which is a walker free rare cube with self imposed power restrictions) plays differently enough that I post in the forums and sometimes scratch my head at comments made regarding cards or how things work in the game that are just completely different from what I see regularly. It makes it hard to relate at times.
I know you have empirical evidence that is pointing you down this path. I'm not dismissing that. But I'm also not just arguing from a theory craft perspective. A lot of my current opinions on this subject come from my own cubing evolution, and while I most likely have less empirical data than you I'm not just making stuff up over here. I can tell you that my group is not sophisticated enough to see some of what I'm doing let alone what you are trying to do, and so much of the influence we believe we have over how our environment works doesn't actually translate to the table. Maybe it would if we have a lot of traffic with our cubes and outside people analyzing the evolving meta (and maybe you do), but I don't believe most people posting here fall into that bucket. It's FNM with half a dozen people and any type of format solving is happening at a snails pace (if at all).
Sorry for the delay in engaging. I've been moving house.
I think both of you have a point, ahadabans and Grillo. Some time ago I played a great deal of a game - the most popular descendant of Richard Bartle's Spellbinder - which at the time I came to it largely lacked a body of strategy. Several years of experience with it did an awful lot to inform me about game theory and the process of breaking a game's strategy.
One of the main things I'd note from that experience is that while thousands of players played some small number of games, and probably dozens played hundreds of games, even among the most prolific players only a small number got really analytical about it - perhaps somewhere between a dozen and twenty. It took several years to reach a point where much of the strategic interest had been sucked from the game and the playerbase dwindled. I would suggest that in any format we're likely to create we just aren't going to have the raw numbers of players to solve to the level of exactness that leaves most picks as obvious. However, I do think that formats can get to the point where they feel more or less stale: certain archetypes just have much better chances of winning than others. If your players are fairly conservative and don't experiment much, you can get stuck in that zone of staleness even though much of the format's potential is unexplored.
I think perhaps the problem we're trying to solve is subtly different from the optimal strategy problem: not everyone is a hard-as-nails Spike just looking to win, and even the Spikes like to blow off steam sometimes and draft something a bit more unusual. I found it interesting how many Channel Fireball pros would attempt to draft Storm in non-powered MTGO cube, for instance - clearly it wasn't a great deck, it was a huge challenge to do well with, but the combination of the challenge and the very different lines of play obviously appealed to a lot of normally very competitive players.
There are going to be cases where the players you have aren't going to be shaken into trying something new until you change up the cards and find a card they want to play with that doesn't go in any of the decks they normally play. There are going to be cases where you have good experimental players who try a lot of different things discovering ways to make archetypes work and thrusting them into the limelight. If we can make space for the latter to do their thing, that's excellent, by bringing new decks to the table they can keep the format feeling fresh for quite a while.
I think both of you have a point, ahadabans and Grillo. Some time ago I played a great deal of a game - the most popular descendant of Richard Bartle's Spellbinder - which at the time I came to it largely lacked a body of strategy. Several years of experience with it did an awful lot to inform me about game theory and the process of breaking a game's strategy.
One of the main things I'd note from that experience is that while thousands of players played some small number of games, and probably dozens played hundreds of games, even among the most prolific players only a small number got really analytical about it - perhaps somewhere between a dozen and twenty. It took several years to reach a point where much of the strategic interest had been sucked from the game and the playerbase dwindled. I would suggest that in any format we're likely to create we just aren't going to have the raw numbers of players to solve to the level of exactness that leaves most picks as obvious. However, I do think that formats can get to the point where they feel more or less stale: certain archetypes just have much better chances of winning than others. If your players are fairly conservative and don't experiment much, you can get stuck in that zone of staleness even though much of the format's potential is unexplored.
I think perhaps the problem we're trying to solve is subtly different from the optimal strategy problem: not everyone is a hard-as-nails Spike just looking to win, and even the Spikes like to blow off steam sometimes and draft something a bit more unusual. I found it interesting how many Channel Fireball pros would attempt to draft Storm in non-powered MTGO cube, for instance - clearly it wasn't a great deck, it was a huge challenge to do well with, but the combination of the challenge and the very different lines of play obviously appealed to a lot of normally very competitive players.
There are going to be cases where the players you have aren't going to be shaken into trying something new until you change up the cards and find a card they want to play with that doesn't go in any of the decks they normally play. There are going to be cases where you have good experimental players who try a lot of different things discovering ways to make archetypes work and thrusting them into the limelight. If we can make space for the latter to do their thing, that's excellent, by bringing new decks to the table they can keep the format feeling fresh for quite a while.
Moving on then to discuss archetypes, I think one of the key dangers to avoid is the feeling that someone's taken apart a number of pre-built decks and scattered the pieces about. If cards are too narrowly synergistic, you quickly get locked out of making interesting choices in a pack. For this reason I think the pay-off cards for archetypes have to be carefully considered; I think for instance that most of the time Delver is actively bad in cube, where Young Pyromancer is not - they both care about the same things, but Pyromancer can be decent with a lower density of instants and sorceries and rewards sequencing. If you pick up a card that places some restriction on half the cards in your deck to make it reasonably playable, I feel as a designer I want it to be high-impact feel-good coolness: "if I build my deck right, this could be totally awesome!".
So, I like to have a few build-arounds which aren't too narrow, with enough support for people to figure out ways to make them cool. I think for instance that Time Spiral is an awesome card - symmetric, with a large impact. It's also useful to consider how the colour pie has traditionally given the colours different strengths and weaknesses, and figure out whether you can deploy loose synergies to divide the colours further. In the end people will always draft to try and reduce their deck's weaknesses, but if you can force them to choose between reducing the weakness and building toward synergistic strength, without that synergy feeling too forced and narrow, I think you're in a good place.
So, I like to have a few build-arounds which aren't too narrow, with enough support for people to figure out ways to make them cool. I think for instance that Time Spiral is an awesome card - symmetric, with a large impact. It's also useful to consider how the colour pie has traditionally given the colours different strengths and weaknesses, and figure out whether you can deploy loose synergies to divide the colours further. In the end people will always draft to try and reduce their deck's weaknesses, but if you can force them to choose between reducing the weakness and building toward synergistic strength, without that synergy feeling too forced and narrow, I think you're in a good place.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yes, I mentioned this before: first order optimal strategies, rather than optimal strategies. Things like ramp, or good stuff.
Sure, and this thread is about an alternate way to approach the problem that doesn't involve constantly making changes to a format, and isn't soft to player psychological profiles.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
In the hopes that we can get back on topic, let me present the issue somewhat differently, in the form of a forum game.
You guys keep on saying you want to "maximize interaction." Ok, thats fine, and in the spirit of that, lets think about how one could maximize interactions between the below card and other cards in a cube. Remember, the troll is supposed to represent a pushed threat.
Give me a few proposals, and we will see how long we can keep the chain going. I will even put the submissions into this list, to make it easy to track.
You guys keep on saying you want to "maximize interaction." Ok, thats fine, and in the spirit of that, lets think about how one could maximize interactions between the below card and other cards in a cube. Remember, the troll is supposed to represent a pushed threat.
Give me a few proposals, and we will see how long we can keep the chain going. I will even put the submissions into this list, to make it easy to track.
You guys keep on saying you want to "maximize interaction." Ok, thats fine, and in the spirit of that, lets think about how one could maximize interactions between the below card and other cards in a cube. Remember, the troll is supposed to represent a pushed threat.
In the PP cube, Auriok Salavagers is a great example of a card the interacts favorably with Troll Ascetic on the most "boring" level (combat) while providing their owners' decks with a valuable synergy component.
River Boa or its ilk are similar to Salvagers but require some mana held in reserve to create a favorable interaction while providing a sturdy attacker when desired. Phyrexian Revoker removes one of the two big advantages of Troll, gains synergies from artifact-based cards while incurring an acceptable mana cost for its board presence in most environments. Cards like Reclamation Sage interact favorable with cards that buff the Troll (and present a fun set of decisions in a cube where there are a lot of "temporary" removal spells like Oblivion Ring or arti-chant threats like Galvanic Juggernaut). Even something fairly innocuous like Kher Keep has merits against the Troll and in synergy decks (token or sacrificial themes), although it is taxing on one's mana.
Aside, I've been trying to put together a good post on this topic, but it feels like a research paper (that I don't have the skills to write). One big component, though, has to be the relationship between drafting and playing through sideboarding as a balancing agent.
The very notion of "first order optimal strategies" - which is in itself really quite flawed in a more basic game theory sense - relies on an assumption of Spikey players. People don't draft Storm because they think it's a great strategy. Timmy doesn't draft ramp because he thinks ramp wins, he drafts ramp because he's figured out it lets him play cards he enjoys playing. What I'm driving at is quite different from what you were driving at before.
You need to begin by working out what your assumptions are, and figure out how they match your actual players, before you start springboarding off them.
Yes, but that original "alternate way" is basically the game theory equivalent of a perpetual motion machine - it's nonsense. It doesn't work like that. I'm a bit distressed after all the back and forth on this that it's coming back up again.
If you want to talk about obscurity and depth, we can talk about that, but it's fundamentally different conceptually from the junk in those Extra Credits videos. Their wrongness on pretty much every empirical point they make matches their wrongness in theory. There's very little in there which is relevant to designing a real strategy game, and I think it's important to ditch their notions entirely and start from what we want to get, what game theory suggests it's plausible for us to get, and how this influences our design. I don't mind going into state spaces and minimax and game theory/AI design and all that kind of stuff, I have some level of AI background and game theory has been a minor interest of mine in the past, but we need to throw away the pseudo-science because it isn't helpful, you cannot have a constructive conversation built on deeply wrong assumptions.
So, I'm trying to move on to something a bit more hopeful than "yeah, at some point your environment will converge to being solved" with some acknowledgement of ahadabans' point that actually many players don't try very hard to solve a format, and try to work with a) assumptions that better match real players and b) reasoning that better matches actual game theory.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
See, Chris you are a natural. We will avoid the research paper (the absence of which has been the source of my headache I think), and just lay out a visual example.
Added
These represent:
1. Chump blockers
2. hard blockers
3. activated ability disruption
4. strategic disruption (aura kill effects)
than you even took it to the next level by thinking of some other ways the aura killing effects could interact with the rest of the cube
5. o-ring effects, which changes the nature of white removal so in some matchups it fills a more tempo roll.
6. Artifact threats. Galv. juggernaut is a very nice selection btw, because with a density of artifact threats for rec sage to hit (a direction we could head), its 187 effect can either be used in the same deck as juggernaut to untap it, or in an opposing deck to destroy it.
In a sense, you also laid out a line that could come back around again at a certain point.
7. Auriok Salvager provides immunity for certain 1cc artifacts from a rec. sage type 187.
Really nice job at brainstorming some examples of maximizing inter-cube interactions.
Added
These represent:
1. Chump blockers
2. hard blockers
3. activated ability disruption
4. strategic disruption (aura kill effects)
than you even took it to the next level by thinking of some other ways the aura killing effects could interact with the rest of the cube
5. o-ring effects, which changes the nature of white removal so in some matchups it fills a more tempo roll.
6. Artifact threats. Galv. juggernaut is a very nice selection btw, because with a density of artifact threats for rec sage to hit (a direction we could head), its 187 effect can either be used in the same deck as juggernaut to untap it, or in an opposing deck to destroy it.
In a sense, you also laid out a line that could come back around again at a certain point.
7. Auriok Salvager provides immunity for certain 1cc artifacts from a rec. sage type 187.
Really nice job at brainstorming some examples of maximizing inter-cube interactions.
I don't know if we have coined a term for creatures that blank some forms of conventional interaction. But I just want to share a creature "evasion" that requires special treatment.
The idea is that Sorcery and most Aura-based removal is useless against these guys. Admittedly Koth and guys like Gideon are on the strong end but I didn't want to ignore them. I imagine that one can tweak the removal suites of one's cube environment to give downsides to conventionally unconditional removal like Arrest while boosting the value of Instant/Flash removal that you've deliberately hamstrung in power like Divine Verdict or Artillerize. I imagine it may even be possible to have decks heavily favoring these sorts of creatures want to draft Wraths in a Wildfire sort of way.
Something I've thought about when fleshing out what sort of removal each color has is what happens to the aggro strategies when key removal spells to clear blockers are drafted by other players simply because removal is valuable. I'm not the sort to cube Path or Plow but the White aggro strategy would love to have those tools but can't count on them because they're such high picks; and in some cubes it is just offensive to some people that has both Path and Plow and the runner's up is Pacifism.
Taking some inspiration from Doom Blade, I started thinking that all black creatures can possibly read "Protection from Black" as far as the majority of black's removal is concerned. The aggro black deck would love a Doom Blade, but if it doesn't get it, it knows it won't outright lose to whoever did get it while having the minor benefit of not having players feel that they got cut. One of my most favorite removal spells ever to be printed for cube applications is Bonds of Faith. I'm sure we're all well-versed in its opportunities for fallibility from Innistrad and it's worth pointing out that like Doom Blade, there are going to be some situations where it goes from being premier removal to the worst card in your deck against your opponent. Something I've always liked about blue is that bounce spells are sometimes only temporary solutions and countermagic feels real dead if it fails to hit.
I find this method to be a subtle tool that can be used to boost aggressive strategies without overhauling a large chunk of your cube. You pull out the 6-8 removal spells in a color and restrict 2-3 of them from nerfing a strategy you want to push.
The idea is that Sorcery and most Aura-based removal is useless against these guys. Admittedly Koth and guys like Gideon are on the strong end but I didn't want to ignore them. I imagine that one can tweak the removal suites of one's cube environment to give downsides to conventionally unconditional removal like Arrest while boosting the value of Instant/Flash removal that you've deliberately hamstrung in power like Divine Verdict or Artillerize. I imagine it may even be possible to have decks heavily favoring these sorts of creatures want to draft Wraths in a Wildfire sort of way.
Something I've thought about when fleshing out what sort of removal each color has is what happens to the aggro strategies when key removal spells to clear blockers are drafted by other players simply because removal is valuable. I'm not the sort to cube Path or Plow but the White aggro strategy would love to have those tools but can't count on them because they're such high picks; and in some cubes it is just offensive to some people that has both Path and Plow and the runner's up is Pacifism.
Taking some inspiration from Doom Blade, I started thinking that all black creatures can possibly read "Protection from Black" as far as the majority of black's removal is concerned. The aggro black deck would love a Doom Blade, but if it doesn't get it, it knows it won't outright lose to whoever did get it while having the minor benefit of not having players feel that they got cut. One of my most favorite removal spells ever to be printed for cube applications is Bonds of Faith. I'm sure we're all well-versed in its opportunities for fallibility from Innistrad and it's worth pointing out that like Doom Blade, there are going to be some situations where it goes from being premier removal to the worst card in your deck against your opponent. Something I've always liked about blue is that bounce spells are sometimes only temporary solutions and countermagic feels real dead if it fails to hit.
I find this method to be a subtle tool that can be used to boost aggressive strategies without overhauling a large chunk of your cube. You pull out the 6-8 removal spells in a color and restrict 2-3 of them from nerfing a strategy you want to push.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yeah, this is good. I've talked about this a little bit before, and safra runs it in her cube.
I never took into account the planeswalkers before though, or chimeric mass. We were thinking of it in terms of dash guys that hurt sorcery speed removal, which makes instant speed removal better. That way it doesn't really blank removal, it just requires players respond to the meta.
Didn't really even think of the interaction with aura based removal, but thats a good point. In a low power setting you get that with stuff like kor skyfisher, but this is a good upgrade to those types of effects.
I never took into account the planeswalkers before though, or chimeric mass. We were thinking of it in terms of dash guys that hurt sorcery speed removal, which makes instant speed removal better. That way it doesn't really blank removal, it just requires players respond to the meta.
Didn't really even think of the interaction with aura based removal, but thats a good point. In a low power setting you get that with stuff like kor skyfisher, but this is a good upgrade to those types of effects.
Long thread is long. Does anyone feel as though they've reached a conclusion or epiphany of sorts?
I don't. I still categorically disagree with the idea that any sort of cyclical metagame exists in draft, and much of the thread seemed to be overly complex discussions about the relationship between threats and answers.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The thread never got off the ground. I really like this forum, but if it has one glaring blind spot its meta game design. This is not my first attempt, nor will it likely be my last. I thought I might be able to succeed here because I actually had managed to construct a meta game driven environment and had some (a lot of) data points, but alas, it was not to be. Here is a summary for you:
1. Idea that metagames needs something to react to and counter-act to was introduced using a simple video and example.
2. Idea briefly discussed, and we were making some real progress on it, than a side debate began about the simplified nature of the video and example
3. Sigh clears this up around page 1 and 4, here and here, respectively.
4, Unfortunately, the same points that had been cleared up pages ago were still being re-argued (on page 6!). I think sigh's posts were maybe a little bit too subtle, or became buried under the barrage.
It kind of got to a point where I felt like there was no way I could continue without tediously deconstructing peoples' posts, making them feel bad, and the forum look ugly. So, I let the topic go, after trying to get people to at least think about the way their removal interacts with their threats.
I don't know why this is such a challenging topic, but it certainty warrants discussion. The competing idea: that a format should just be a collection of archetypes that are explored and than more or less discarded and replaced (either directly or through constant supplementation of new cards): seems strictly worse.
Limited has never been an infinite sandbox, people have always been able to draft only a finite number of decks within a format, and focusing on the technical aspect of play between those decks is a fine alternative to having to constantly spend $$$ and time to, in-effect, keep a format in an immature state on the basis thats better design. If I want to give decks tools to encourage play and counter play between one another, exploiting the natural impetus of certain players to "break" a format, that should be fine, and is certainty preferable to the alternative of them actually breaking it (which they will do).
The scarce resources during the drafting (deck-building) phase wouldn't create what I'd call a cyclical metagame, but it could create a dynamic metagame of sorts (especially given a finite number of engine-level archetype cards and mana fixing). The dynamic metagame depends a lot on the alertness of drafters and their understanding of somewhat-niche-card application with respect to the cards that they didn't select during the pick process.
And of course, this depends on the cube's (or set's) design (and how many cards remain undrafted); there is a fine line between the healthy amount archetype support and an overabundance of support (and the same with mana fixing). An overabundance of archetype support or mana fixing leads to lazy drafters and a stagnant meta. How many times do the Riptide denizens see drafters go into a cubing session (or sometimes even retail draft) with tunnel vision locked on the archetype they want? If this mentality survives a few cubing sessions (and drafters with it end up with winning decks), I would hazard the environment isn't healthy. At least, I personally use this as signpost to make changes. (Diluting strategies that over perform or going into a more modular card that also supports a strategy has paid off with cards slotting into a greater variety of decks during deck building.)
Earlier, Jason put the question if 8 duel decks could be created to showcase a rich and rewarding environment over a long-running period; to me, cubes without a sufficient amount of scarcity mimic this sort of environment every time they hit the table. Unfortunately, a rich play environment isn't always predicated by an interesting draft format (and vise versa). The relationship between threats and answers plays into drafting, deck building (including sideboarding) and playing, and the relationship is important and often complex.
But that's where we are: a complex discussion that isn't particularly sexy. To get to the next level of breakthrough, I would imagine defining assumptions/givens, connecting the relationships between archetypes/classes of cards and then going into number crunching.
I think you make some great points, to which I would say:
1) metagame design is hard. If this site is bad at it, probably part of that can be attributed to the fact that I'm not particularly good at it.
The big challenge is that much of our design is still anchored in power-max philosophy. We chop off a lot of GRBS, make fixing way better and then push the hell out of everything else. To do anything else requires a complete change. There's no breathing room at this point in the power curve.
That's not to say there aren't dynamics. We all put in more exile cards to fight gravecrawler et. al.. We put in Wastelands to fight the improved fixing. More sweepers to fight the improved aggro and lack of Wurmcoil Engine.
But to really develop a metagame? To think like a designer? I need to step wayyyyyy back on the power curve. Or design my own cards. Or do something else.
Part of what defines limited formats is a push in some direction. The bulk of the creatures in Scars of Mirrodin were soooooo small that Arc Trail generally agreed to be better than Koth. The Eldrazi formats are so cluttered with little tokens that the top-end guys need Trample or an attack trigger to be a sufficient reward for bothering to ramp. Landfall guys are shit on defense, so blah blah blah.
This whole metagame thing needs a stimulus. It needs a push in some weird design direction. Every time I modify my main cube to push in some direction (zombies, lifegain, pod), I try to provide players with some counterplay. There certainly could be more attention paid to things like critical toughness, but I think in the context of a "generic" Riptide style cube, there's not much of a stimulus.
BFZ is interesting because most of the removal doesn't just let you unconditionally destroy something. Gideon's Reproach can't kill a big guy without chump blockers. The red spells can't unless you stack or have a ton of lands for that
spell. Sheer Drop lets the opponent get an attack off first, but you can counter this with things like the land that grants vigilance (or by not attacking). Smite the Monstrous does it, but it's just one card, and you can try to force them to use it on a smaller target. Stasis Snare and Quarantine Field can, but they are less common in the environment. Unique mechanics enable this, as does the breaking of singleton on removal. Lower power allows us to include more conditional removal.
I think these ideas are good, and underdeveloped, but it's really hard to get there, and with full honesty, I don't know what I can do with these ideas to apply them to my primary cube.
Yeah I think that some of these ideas apply much easier to a cube on the power level of the penny-pincer cube than most of our cubes. Even then, I don't think there will ever really be a cyclical thing happening. There's a linear optimization of the decks until the decks are as good as they can be. Then you probably just have 1 best deck.
You may be lucky and end up with 3-4 best decks. Then you may have a rock paper scissors thing, but this isn't standard where you can expect everyone to bring one deck because it did well last week, and bring the deck that beats that. You just draft the best deck presented to you in your packs.
Also note that nobody gets to build the best deck anyways, as we're all fighting over its cards. So there's not much point in talking about the best decks, just the best cards. So say Troll is the best card in the cube. So everybody wants the edicts. That doesn't mean you're gonna start seeing significantly more edicts. Sure, they may get maindecked a little more, but you wont start seeing 4x edict in every sideboard. The number of edicts you'll see stays about the same. So Troll is still the best card.
You may be lucky and end up with 3-4 best decks. Then you may have a rock paper scissors thing, but this isn't standard where you can expect everyone to bring one deck because it did well last week, and bring the deck that beats that. You just draft the best deck presented to you in your packs.
Also note that nobody gets to build the best deck anyways, as we're all fighting over its cards. So there's not much point in talking about the best decks, just the best cards. So say Troll is the best card in the cube. So everybody wants the edicts. That doesn't mean you're gonna start seeing significantly more edicts. Sure, they may get maindecked a little more, but you wont start seeing 4x edict in every sideboard. The number of edicts you'll see stays about the same. So Troll is still the best card.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I think you make some great points, to which I would say:
1) metagame design is hard. If this site is bad at it, probably part of that can be attributed to the fact that I'm not particularly good at it.
The big challenge is that much of our design is still anchored in power-max philosophy. We chop off a lot of GRBS, make fixing way better and then push the hell out of everything else. To do anything else requires a complete change. There's no breathing room at this point in the power curve.
That's not to say there aren't dynamics. We all put in more exile cards to fight gravecrawler et. al.. We put in Wastelands to fight the improved fixing. More sweepers to fight the improved aggro and lack of Wurmcoil Engine.
But to really develop a metagame? To think like a designer? I need to step wayyyyyy back on the power curve. Or design my own cards. Or do something else.
Part of what defines limited formats is a push in some direction. The bulk of the creatures in Scars of Mirrodin were soooooo small that Arc Trail generally agreed to be better than Koth. The Eldrazi formats are so cluttered with little tokens that the top-end guys need Trample or an attack trigger to be a sufficient reward for bothering to ramp. Landfall guys are shit on defense, so blah blah blah.
This whole metagame thing needs a stimulus. It needs a push in some weird design direction. Every time I modify my main cube to push in some direction (zombies, lifegain, pod), I try to provide players with some counterplay. There certainly could be more attention paid to things like critical toughness, but I think in the context of a "generic" Riptide style cube, there's not much of a stimulus.
BFZ is interesting because most of the removal doesn't just let you unconditionally destroy something. Gideon's Reproach can't kill a big guy without chump blockers. The red spells can't unless you stack or have a ton of lands for that
Unique mechanics enable this, as does the breaking of singleton on removal. Lower power allows us to include more conditional removal.
I think these ideas are good, and underdeveloped, but it's really hard to get there, and with full honesty, I don't know what I can do with these ideas to apply them to my primary cube.
I agree in that framing of it as being hard, and as a complex discussion that isn't very sexy. I certainty don't have all of the answers, and its helpful to be able to bounce ideas off of people to better inform my own ideas. Chris' framing of it as a dynamic metagame is really good, as was rasmus' discussion of it being more like an oscillation. We just were never able to move past those sorts of realizations, and the thing bogged down into unending arguments about whether it was even worth thinking about metagame design (it is), or repetitious semantics arguments (everyones favorite), or obsessing over the particular brand of analogy being used to make an unsexy topic slightly more approachable. On a forum where we are ok with breaking essentially every other rule of cube design--often times rather ham-handedly--it was rather surprising to me. Is it really easier to talk about poly cubes, the latest brand of utility X draft, card squadroning, or unlimited fetches than the simple ways that cards without a cube should illicit play and counter play? I don't think it should be, if anything, I would think it would be the more natural direction of discourse.
I also don't think you need to step back on power level or depend heavily on customs. By your own admission, you are at least partiality doing it already, except reactively as part of a patching process. Why not examine it more holistically? Chris gave a pretty good outline of "how to think like a designer:"
At this point I shouldn't be surprised to see a response as insightful as this being presented by Chris, but it encapsulates a host of issues both with cube structure (overabundant archetype support or mana fixing) and the lazy tunnel vision drafting techniques that follow. This is stuff thats been kind of popping up more and more, from Rasmus' posts about whether too good fixing leads to good stuff drafting (yes, its at least partially responsible), to Lucre complaining about cubes with an overabundance of dedicated aggro cards (and struggling control), to my complaints about over saturating with build arounds or support pieces.
Thats not to say that any of our formats are actively bad (and I'm afraid some some people may have viewed my posts as saying such), as these are issues that people run into that aren't likely to just go away on their own accord, and are very easy to accidentally build into or end up perpetuating through the very patches designed to correct them.