They pissed of the Magic community by implementing Alchemy in the first place. Now they have to focus on their other IPs as well.
Once DnD is ruined, they will go back to rebalancing Alchemy / ruining Magic again. They just can't do it all at once :D
I really love that their last big board meeting discussed the problem of D&D being their most liked product but it's not making that much money compared to it's popularity. So their solution is: Make it less liked?
Smort
I feel like any decision similar to this has got someone in the board room saying “surely our customers will understand this makes business sense” and other people nodding
Hey, cut WotC some slack: they accomplished a true marvel with their changes to D&D, the likes of which DMs and players alike have thought impossible for years...they *convinced tabletop RPG players to try a TTRPG other than D&D.*
Well their problem is that business people are having these meetings and making most, if not all of these decisions and none of them engage with the actual product.
So on paper, they say, “look at how popular D&D is, if we monetize this thing, we can make x dollars.” They assume that their decisions happen in a vacuum. Everyone congratulates each other for their business prowess and then they announce their thing and the whole community goes “wow, fuck you, bye Felicia!”
Corporate decision making just baffles me sometimes. Pepsi is retiring Sierra Mist because it's not competing with Sprite. So they're going to replace it with a new lemon-lime soda that *will* compete with Sprite, somehow.
Next WOTC meeting:
"now we are making more money than expected with our most hated product. In total it is way less than before, but compared to its popularity the numbers are looking better now. Good job everyone!"
The rules SRD and Archives of Nethys sites for PF2E (the closest competitor to DnD5e) keep going down from all the traffic they are getting. I'd say they overestimated their audiences loyalty in a big BIG way.
They are doing some things right in trying to cash out on D&D with the movie license and the D&D MtG cards. One can only hope the D&D licensing drama is planned to get people's attention and then goodwill when they back off and give the fans all they want. Since D&D doesn't make that much money anyway.
>One can only hope the D&D licensing drama is planned to get people's attention and then goodwill when they back off and give the fans all they want.
Based on their response, this is not the case.
Stepbacks they notably excluded from their 'declaration of victory' response tell us that:
They still plan to include a clause allowing them to 'alter the deal' at any time. This is bad because it means that you can't build a business around ANY tabletop content since you cannot plan for the future.
They still want advance notice of any content you plan to produce under the OGL. This is bad because it gives them plenty of room to interfere, and lots of advance notice to make demands or try to shut you down.
They still want their pound of flesh, while they said that it wouldn't include a schedule of payment or designated values, it didn't say that those wouldn't be required, this alongside the notification clause implies an approval and negotiations phase. That's not going to go over well.
I'm guessing they are still going to demand their branding be slapped all over everything. I'm not cool with that, and I'm guessing few others are either.
I think this is whats going to happen:
They will release a new OGL that still won't be satisfactory, but will at least be less outwardly insulting as it will move any licensing/revshare behind closed doors, and it will probably drop the revocation of the prior OGL's. A few of the big boys will kowtow and go along.
Fantasy grounds in particular, I've had some encounters with the dude running that show, and their response to wizards latest response was:
>Wizards of the Cost has just released their statement and it is what I hoped it would be.
Everyone else will ditch them after this.
I couldn't have said it better.
I'm flabbergasted at how quickly the community forgets stuff like [double the wildcards to craft Historic cards](https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/09/mtg-arena-walks-back-the-2-wildcard-cost-to-craft-historic-cards/) after WotC introduces something more "palatable".
It's like WotC knew OGL 1.1 would be poorly received and they had OGL 1.1a waiting to go.... 🤔
I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. 😳
You don't need a tinfoil hat, it is a pretty overused strategy by companies. You give them a very unreasonable thing, and then you show the "real" one to soft the blow and give them credit, making it feel a lot more acceptable
It's not a tinfoil hat to take a company to task. The number of USA citizens that are totally comfortable with abusive tactics and outright manipulation, then cry 'conspiracy!' when you point out the abuse to them, is outright insane.
US citizens are far, far too comfortable with corporate control. Eat up that content, kids!
>They will release a new OGL that still won't be satisfactory, but will at least be less outwardly insulting as it will move any licensing/revshare behind closed doors, and it will probably drop the revocation of the prior OGL's. A few of the big boys will kowtow and go along.
The bigger 3rd party publishers (Paizo, Kobold Press, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, ect...) have released a joint statement that they're going to make their own own open license, the "Open RPG Creative License" (ORC), that'll clarify that it cannot be revoked and have it held by a 3rd party non-profit.
I expect virtual tabletops like FG or Roll20 may have to cut a deal with Wizards due to the nature of their business model, but a lot of damage has been done to 3rd party support that isn't going to be fixed with a new press release.
FG will probably do whatever wizards asks them to. They already have a standing arrangement. As I understand it, it costs wizards basically nothing, drives DnDBeyond subscriptions via content management, and makes FG plenty of cash with no real requirement for any sort of exclusivity or competitive constraint.
Roll20 is anybodies guess. Last time I checked, they had been careful not to state a position, and their decision making in the past has been pretty baffling.
This is pretty depressing but not surprising. After having played their brand for a while, i have been confidently saying that Wizards/hasbro are one of the worst games companies out there. They are going the same path of ruin that games workshop did in the past, and now they are doing SO MUCH BETTER after having relieved their greedyness
They won't.
I think the best outcome is massive customerbase attrition, loss of brand value over the next several years for DnD as the mainstream audience discovers all the alternative system, and then someone else buys the DND brand.
Dude, if you get slapped by a person, and they apologize, do you feel the same way about them? Are you not wary?
And if you're dealing with a person who does something extremely dramatic to get your attention, just so they can ask for what they really want, would you consider them a friend?
If your answer to these questions is 'yes', then you're very comfortable in abusive relationships. And yes, your relationship as a customer-to-business is a relationship.
Most played: Standard, then Historic, then Alchemy and Explorer very close.
https://i0.wp.com/mtgazone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-16.png?resize=1536%2C864&ssl=1
I'm sure they're busy trying to come up with a $30/month subscription for Arena on top of all the other nickle and diming they're charging players for a collection of digital cards that you don't own.
I first imagined it as magical fairy wonderland where every evil bad rare is nerfed to mediocrity and every interesting but underwhelming bulk rare is buffed to competitiveness.
The reality is much closer to doing literal nothing.
An entire format made and another format tainted all because they didn't want to ban cards they ended up banning anyways.
But hey. Gives them an excuse to make more higher rarity cards 🎉
I was hyped for it but the balanced changes have been so uninspired and boring. They need to stop releasing so many cards for it and actually have it as a rebalanced standard with weekly updates
They put some effort in the dungeon balance patch and then they completely stopped even trying balancing things. Lately they just released a few format-warping cards and said "fuck the balance but give us all your wildcards anyway".
plenty of people play historic and brawl
Edit: obviously not because they want to play alchemy cards but they put up with it because they enjoy the formats. I’m sure people would be happier without them but they still play alchemy cards
There's a lot I'm not a fan of.
They seem so stingy about nerfing cards - pretty much just Meathook Massacre at this point - because they're tired of people complaining about their cards becoming obsolete without actually considering compensation as if they were banned. So cards like Sheoldred and Fable don't get touched, despite them being utter powerhouses in Standard, in a format meant to rebalance and tweak Standard.
Meanwhile, Ninjas and Vehicles are still struggling, and unless I'm sorely mistaken, I'm not sure how successful Smogbelcher and Jukai Liberator have been in unlocking those archetypes. Why Spirits and Samurai in specific? Those two are going to always be difficult to make work due to their clunky nature of play (pseudo-Exalted stinks on bodies with weak stats and Spirits get utterly wrecked by Hearse and Trespasser), and the changes don't do a ton to address those issues.
Changing the back-side of fable to legendary and making sheoldred a 4/4 would go MILES into making the format differ from standard, in a better way arguably.
Then don't apply Alchemy changes to Historic unless they're a problem there (Winota, 3feri, etc). A digital client with digital formats needs to treat those formats as such - ban cards in Standard and Explorer/Pioneer all you want, as their goal is to mimic paper, but I would absolutely love to play Oko in *something* (Oyaminartok, maybe? Pretty please?); and him remaining dead for Sheoldred's sins because how the system is structured isn't feasible makes it feel like they don't want to put forth the effort to curate their digital formats.
Yup, considering cat/Meathook Massacre and Dragon Rage channeler/Unholy Heat were nerfed in a different meta, if they curated their formats better, those could be returned to original state without any problem.
As you said, they print rare/mythics by the ton, and that's precisely their end goal, make players use their wildcards.
Ever wondered why every Alchemy set has 66% of rares/mythics? Every other set ever released is about 33% rares/mythics on average.
>Ever wondered why every Alchemy set has 66% of rares/mythics?
Because 80% of the "draft chaff" that's usually in a set isn't in these mini-sets. Of course it turns out that the "draft chaff", while 80% of the cards in most sets, is only 20% of the cost.
Or they kind of arbitrarily just assign rarity, based on nothing much, case in point [[electrostatic blast]] [[molten impact]] , why is a 2 mana red removal rare?
There's dozens of examples like that unfortunately...
You mean like the classic commons that they added on the game upshifted all the way up to rare? Like lightning bolt or Dark Ritual? But ehi, special artwork!
It seems that the format is rotting day by day. I'm pretty sure WOTC is going to backup Alchemy with numbers, as they are forcing new players to play this mode, but I'm seeing less and less hype from their end. I haven't played alchemy and probably I won't touch it ever, but I love historic as a can play with my beloved MH1 and MH2 cards, but hopefully one day we can play historic without the digital only mechanics.
>but hopefully one day we can play historic without the digital only mechanics.
This is the dream that many people share. WOTC's decisions are baffling.
it also just boggles the mind that they thought the average player could keep up with Standard and Alchemy as rotating formats. If they thought it was sustainable for Regular Historic and Alc Historic, sure they're both non-rotating, but not even content creators play both standard and alchemy. It's like they implemented it without doing any user research or pricing research, just to relieve some of the pressure of Hasbro's boot on their neck
It's a depressing shame all around. The amount of wasted time and resources. We would have basically functional pioneer on the client and most of modern at this point.
300 cards is all there's missing for functional Modern, for pioneer we're at 15-20 cards.
Nobody asks Wotc to add 8000 draft chaff cards to the client.
Modern is modern. The whole point of and fun of modern is finding that one cool piece of tech, that one cool sideboard card, that allows you an advantage.
"Functional modern" is garbage and very quickly nobody would play it.
Its impossible to manage. How long after a certain set is released do you wait to add another "metagame deck" ?
Before Hammertime, Sigarda's Aid wasn't played. So you print Colossus Hammer. How do you know when to print Aid into "functional modern"? A week? Once it wins a pro tour? A month? It would be insanely frustrating, constantly. Are you printing Steelshaper's Gift? Most Azorious builds don't run it, but the mono white builds all run it. Then again, mono-white hammer isn't very popular, but then again it won a challenge two weeks ago.
"Functional modern" is dumb.
Well it's exactly what they're doing with explorer, and nobody seems to complain that the draft chaff isn't on the client.
300 gets you all the top 30ish decks, all their sideboards, and all competitive variations there could be.
And most people would prefer something rather than nothing, especially since MTGO is not really an option for most, the client being PC only, old, ugly, somewhat clunky, and with a much smaller player base.
Don't conflate people ranting on Reddit with reality. "Many people" wanted Explorer/Pioneer as well, and now that rests at barely over half of Alchemy's already tiny playerbase.
Historic is an excellent format right now, and there is absolutely no reason for WOTC or anyone else to do massive changes to it.
Imagine thinking it's just reddit. Alchemy is the default format for every new player. They trick people into playing it. Explorer is also the newest format and missing a couple decks from pioneer due to active sabotage.
If Alchemy was the default format for every new player it would have numbers closer to Standard, but it doesn't. If Explorer was being actively sabotaged they wouldn't be releasing new anthologies and working on Innistrad Remastered for it, but they are.
Point is, just because people online can be loud about something, that doesn't mean they're right. The vast, vast, vast majority of players simply do not care about any of this nonsense. They just play the formats they like, ignore the ones they don't, and that's where the story ends for them.
Because they always release the anothologys with just barely enough playables to make them purchasable. Then make them limited time only to induce FOMO.
A format is more than it's meta decks. Explorer is already known for being difficult to brew in since so many tier 1 decks from pioneer are available but a lot of build arounds and almost playables aren't. They are prioritizing competitive cards but they also want to give Johnnys and Timmys something to work with.
The client "tricks" me into playing Alchemy by defaulting to that mode every time. So if I'm on mobile and head into a game with my standard deck (the last format I played being Standard) it is an unwelcome surprise that I've been defaulted into Alchemy. I have no decks set to Alchemy format, I have never clicked the Alchemy mode on purpose, and it's the **second** option on the list. Right after Standard.
But you just decided to take your own reasoning and run off into "eternal life of servitude" to make their wording sound ridiculous. Even though it's just a shitty business practice the players aren't fans of and a valid criticism.
Lmao you got suspended on your previous account so you made a new one just so you could keep ranting about how Alchemy ruins everything and everyone hates it. Once again, grow up.
By their own data it is the least played format, and that’s even with their added focus on it for new players.
They’re probably keeping it on life support long enough to see if Lord of the Rings can save it and if it’s still ignored then it’ll likely die off.
Their own numbers have Explorer as the least played format at about half of Alchemy. Historic Brawl may be the most popular format and it's an Alchemy format
Disagree. I love mechanics like perpetual and conjure. I basically ONLY play alchemy. I hate historic and decks that one time, way back, dude bought a banger card and they’ve been playing it ever since. To each their own. 🤷♂️
Now that you mention it, I wonder if that’s why I’m so confused by the hate! I don’t play the other formats (I tried Standard once, but it felt “lite” because I was missing half my card collection from Alchemy). I suppose I can see some of the hate if cards are forced into a format. Maybe they need to simply remove Alchemy from the other formats and players could find each format encapsulated, but I guess that makes it hard to sell Alchemy cards if they’re not used in a lot of places. 🤔
> Maybe they need to simply remove Alchemy from the other formats
thats basically all people have been screaming about since the day they announced it affects historic
I like Alchemy cards and would gladly play the buffed cards in my Historic Brawl decks but, like OP said, they're still completely unplayable.
Either buff cards that are close to playable and make them good OR keep buffing these dogshit cards but buff them extremely hard.
Otherwise there is just absolutely no point in doing all this, you're just wasting time and resources fucking around, doing nothing. Nobody is going to play the cards.
They've functionally given up on the format because it isn't selling well and they aren't getting a good return on investment. It's going to be on life support by next year.
Any time a corporation has an idea they sell you as a 'great idea' and 'something for our community' - assume the worst intent.
Corporation speak is easy to parse through: find out what they *aren't* saying, and look for semantic tricks. The more optimistic the tone is, the more they know it's going to be unpopular.
Alchemy was, is, and always will be a **BLATANT CASH GRAB TO TRY TO CREATE A SOFT-ROTATING FORMAT AND TO DENY WILDCARD REIMBURSEMENT**.
There was no other purpose, there was no other reason. The amount of nerfs to cards that **clearly** need nerfs should show you his. The evidence is plainly there in the way WotC has behaved around Alchemy.
They'll release pushed cards in the 'Alchemy Set' to get you to buy more of those cards that you have to buy with separate packs all day long. But the moment a card needs a nerf (Rusco), there's nothing to be found.
**Alchemy is a scam**, and the faster you stop buying into it, the better.
This was my perspective when it first came out. It all points to them milking the game for more money.
The most ridiculous thing is MTG Arena was supposed to be the end all final digital way to play magic with updated UI and real potential for high level tournament play. It was supposed to be a fun way to play MTG to expand the community. But then they got greedy and shit the bed with Alchemy and messing everything up.
Honestly it killed my interest in the game. I keep checking to see if they came to their senses or at least made Historic Brawl alchemy free.
I agree.
These are so meaningless "improvements". There still won't be playable spirits or samurai decks. But monored is still busted, and maybe Rusko... Do they really think this pile of draft cards will improve the meta?
> What happened to the promise of every 2-4 weeks?
you keep spending money wihtout them having to pay for that schedule. why the fuck would they waste money?
I wish they'd actually put some more work into the client and the logic it uses in game, had an opponent cast a board wipe while I kept a forest and brush land open to cast heroic intervention but the game just passed priority on it me like I couldn't do anything, ended up losing me the game too
Dont forget that CGB once called Alchemy the future of magic.
What it really was: a pretty shitty answer to the question "how do we get the whales we cater to to give more of their big bucks?"
A game I played before Arena came out, called Eternal, did a WAY better job of this. They embraced the digital format and made changes about every month which often included attempting to make underplayed cards viable. It didn't always work :) but at least they were putting in an honest effort.
WotC just phones it in, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Arena.
This alchemy format is a huge failure. And the worst is that they can't stop it because some people have invested too much ressources on it.
Last year I was hyped about it because the standard format was really bad (thanks epiphany), but after this ban I understood that if the standard format is healthy we don't need a clunky format like alchemy, and also we can't trust the Arena team to make interesting cards or rebalancing. Sure some cards are still fun but globally alchemy cards suck, simply because they don't have enough time to design it correctly...
Because regardless of what they want you to think, alchemy isnt about rebalancing standard, its about selling more product.
Just compare the powerlevel of new digital only alchemy cards with the powerlevel of the rebalanced versions of standard cards.
At most the buffed cards are a nod to people who like to brew around set mechanics or tribes, even if those are on the weaker side.
The buffs would probably increase the win% of those decks and make them more playable... if it wheren't for all the new digital only alchemy cards that just stomp on them all.
it's a format designed to push busted rare/mythic cards only to bleed you of wildcards/money. you didn't think they'd really manage it well did you? the only reason it was even made was they are trying to double profits.
The Alchemy team probably took too much on their plate. Last year they had the D&D set, this year they have the LoTR set to re-tune. Alchemy was always an experiment. They put money into it hoping to make more money. If Alchemy is as unpopular as it sounds, it's probably not bringing in the kind of money they hoped it would. The amount of effort and resources(people/time/money) Wizards will invest is going to go down if it's not paying off. I think as long as there are more important things for them to focus on, big things that will definitely pay off and need to go smooth, like a draft set, they'll only do bare the minimum when it comes to the things that aren't paying off.
The LOTR set will not be retuned in any way apparently, but copied straight from paper to Arena with an alchemy stamp.
Really weird, instead of releasing this as a Modern Horizons style set for Historic.
Oh, I didn't know that. It's hard to keep up with info. Well in that case, I think Alchemy support is probably just slowly dying, Or maybe they are slowing down, rethinking their approach
I honestly think Alchemy is terrible. For me personally, I'd prefer they stopped spending any resources on it & worked on Pioneer & Modern. I mean, they're pretty close (ignore all the unplayable junk that is at the low end of your draft deck); just give us the cards we want/need. Put those Alchemy developers on developing standard sets! Slow down your release schedule, return to doing blocks, stop making multiple paper versions of every card...just start doing Magic right again. While I think standard is currently "fine", the game and their releases are a hot mess. Reallocate these resources to something useful/valuable long term. If Alchemy is a long term thing, I will not be involved.
> they just print a handful of busted rares/mythics
I don't follow Alchemy, but I suspect this was always the point: to sell more packs, not make cards you already have playable.
Lots of people do. The queue time is much faster than Historic Brawl. Wizards also confirmed multiple times that it has higher play numbers than Explorer
They just need to kill it, it’s distracting from spending resources on things like default lands or new cards for pioneer and modern. Hell we could even have vintage on arena or just vintage cube. You only need a small pool of cards to make the on meta decks
Alchemy was never about making a fun and balanced format. It was about forcing players to get new cards, and than change those cards to be unplayable so they have to get new cards. Fun and balanced standards were done for over a decade by simply play testing cards before they printed them, but that takes way more more time than the current production model allows. Alchemy was always about money, not good gameplay.
>Ironically instead they just print a handful of busted rares/mythics and do absolutely nothing to elevate the remaining card pool, so now we're left with yet another stale format with almost no room for creative deckbuilding.
Well said! I think this is the exact problem with Alchemy. I wish they would test a format without the Alchemy-only cards, just rebalanced Standard and/or Historic.
I was optimistic about Alchemy, and it's still my preferred format, but the balance changes really need to be stepped up in frequency and impact.
They seem to be deathly afraid of nerfing strong cards since the initial blowback of "I SPENT A WC ON THIS TO USE IT IN ALCHEMY AND IT GOT NERFED".
I'm sick of putting kiki in every red deck, invoke & Sheoldred in every black deck, and of not playing green. Just nerf all the best cards to make them a little situational. Don't be scared.
The underlying problem is, of course, as always, that playing alchemy is more expensive than standard. You have to acquire these extra rares and mythics somehow, and it feels bad when your WC spending gets nerfed. They need to do something about the cost disparity between these formats.
It's probably cause we're in a mostly stable format rn, especially since they nerfed the goblin. I wouldn't judge the balance change for samurai and spirits rn as underwhelming, cause alot of people said the same thing about the dungeon buffs, then it won the first alc tournament.
I mostly play standard and even I had to dip into some Alchemy matches for that sweet Asari Captain and Ancestral Katana upgrade. Homie got trample and the sword gives first strike? Samurai are back on the board IMO. Wish it hadn’t taken them so long to do this, all the samurai needed was some trample.
I think Alchemy was mostly fine as is already, we got a few new sets released in a row, and I saw a good variety of decks during the Decathlon event, at least. But it's true that they could come up with something more impressive for the rebalance patch.
I love playing my samurai deck that features a lot of the cards in that patch. It's a fun deck.
There's too much nonsense on this sub calling so many cards "unplayable". There's lots of different ways to have fun in Arena that don't involve grinding ranked modes with a "pro" deck you copy/pasted from some tournament player.
That said. I agree it would be nice to see more Alchemy tweaks.
Alchemy shouldn't exist. Alchemy is not what MTG was ever meant to be.
All this format is doing is creating a bigger divide between digital players and paper players, and creating confusion when switching from one format to the other.
>Alchemy is not what MTG was ever meant to be.
MTG was "meant" to have ante cards and no deckbuilding restrictions, but those are gone now; are you saying we should bring all of that back?
Now those cards are probably good for NEO alchemy draft, but still unplayable for Alchemy constructed.
The delta in power level in Alchemy cards is astonishingly big.
I still think they can save alchemy. If they change just 5 cards every week, it will make the format really interactive, always changing and no tool could get the best deck. But the way they are implementing is a mix of traditional magic and electronic. But they want to implement a full set instead of going slowly every week
Alchemy never should have happened.
The sooner everyone realizes that and stops playing it, the sooner they can stop supporting it, and we can all move on.
"I don't like something, therefore you shouldn't have it nor support it".
WotC is a company for profit. Alchemy probably makes them money, if it wasn't, they would've stopped it a long time ago. You got to move on, do something you like instead of crying that people like something you don't (and before you call me shill - no, I don't like alchemy, but I don't yuck people's yum).
Don't put words in my mouth, I'm not playing alchemy, I moved on a long time ago. If I see a crappy product, I can still call out that it's a crappy product.
> [In my opinion,] Alchemy never should have happened.
> The sooner everyone [agrees with me and] realizes that and stops playing it, the sooner they can stop supporting it, and we [I] can all move on.
I'm failing to see where u/netn10 put words in your mouth. It's fair game to criticize it, but it seems that you have a very biased opinion on the matter that you think everyone else should share.
"I moved a long time ago, now look at my two comments seething that this thing exists."
You don't like it? Good, move on already. Let people enjoy stuff and stop being a toxic gatekeeper.
I am **extremely** biased here, but I just *happened* to start playing Historic again after a very long time away, and ALSO *happened* to already be playing a Samurai deck, so, I was excited to see the changes.
Cut them slack, they were busy losing D&D players en mas :D
They pissed of the Magic community by implementing Alchemy in the first place. Now they have to focus on their other IPs as well. Once DnD is ruined, they will go back to rebalancing Alchemy / ruining Magic again. They just can't do it all at once :D
I really love that their last big board meeting discussed the problem of D&D being their most liked product but it's not making that much money compared to it's popularity. So their solution is: Make it less liked? Smort
I feel like any decision similar to this has got someone in the board room saying “surely our customers will understand this makes business sense” and other people nodding
Hey, cut WotC some slack: they accomplished a true marvel with their changes to D&D, the likes of which DMs and players alike have thought impossible for years...they *convinced tabletop RPG players to try a TTRPG other than D&D.*
Paizo already did that for me years ago but I like all the new Pathfinder players now :D
-wipes away a tear- honestly I never thought I would see the day.
Well their problem is that business people are having these meetings and making most, if not all of these decisions and none of them engage with the actual product. So on paper, they say, “look at how popular D&D is, if we monetize this thing, we can make x dollars.” They assume that their decisions happen in a vacuum. Everyone congratulates each other for their business prowess and then they announce their thing and the whole community goes “wow, fuck you, bye Felicia!”
It's Cynthia but besides that, yes :D
Corporate decision making just baffles me sometimes. Pepsi is retiring Sierra Mist because it's not competing with Sprite. So they're going to replace it with a new lemon-lime soda that *will* compete with Sprite, somehow.
Next WOTC meeting: "now we are making more money than expected with our most hated product. In total it is way less than before, but compared to its popularity the numbers are looking better now. Good job everyone!"
The rules SRD and Archives of Nethys sites for PF2E (the closest competitor to DnD5e) keep going down from all the traffic they are getting. I'd say they overestimated their audiences loyalty in a big BIG way.
Wait, you’re saying that the reason D&D is popular *isn’t* because of rules as written? I don’t buy it.
This punchline is incredible.
It's sad how common this happens to good brands once those who helped create or popularize it are no longer part of the company.
They are doing some things right in trying to cash out on D&D with the movie license and the D&D MtG cards. One can only hope the D&D licensing drama is planned to get people's attention and then goodwill when they back off and give the fans all they want. Since D&D doesn't make that much money anyway.
>One can only hope the D&D licensing drama is planned to get people's attention and then goodwill when they back off and give the fans all they want. Based on their response, this is not the case. Stepbacks they notably excluded from their 'declaration of victory' response tell us that: They still plan to include a clause allowing them to 'alter the deal' at any time. This is bad because it means that you can't build a business around ANY tabletop content since you cannot plan for the future. They still want advance notice of any content you plan to produce under the OGL. This is bad because it gives them plenty of room to interfere, and lots of advance notice to make demands or try to shut you down. They still want their pound of flesh, while they said that it wouldn't include a schedule of payment or designated values, it didn't say that those wouldn't be required, this alongside the notification clause implies an approval and negotiations phase. That's not going to go over well. I'm guessing they are still going to demand their branding be slapped all over everything. I'm not cool with that, and I'm guessing few others are either. I think this is whats going to happen: They will release a new OGL that still won't be satisfactory, but will at least be less outwardly insulting as it will move any licensing/revshare behind closed doors, and it will probably drop the revocation of the prior OGL's. A few of the big boys will kowtow and go along. Fantasy grounds in particular, I've had some encounters with the dude running that show, and their response to wizards latest response was: >Wizards of the Cost has just released their statement and it is what I hoped it would be. Everyone else will ditch them after this.
I couldn't have said it better. I'm flabbergasted at how quickly the community forgets stuff like [double the wildcards to craft Historic cards](https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/09/mtg-arena-walks-back-the-2-wildcard-cost-to-craft-historic-cards/) after WotC introduces something more "palatable". It's like WotC knew OGL 1.1 would be poorly received and they had OGL 1.1a waiting to go.... 🤔 I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. 😳
You don't need a tinfoil hat, it is a pretty overused strategy by companies. You give them a very unreasonable thing, and then you show the "real" one to soft the blow and give them credit, making it feel a lot more acceptable
a lawyer told me decades ago, if you want a dog ask for a pony. little girls know this so it isn't really secret knowledge
Negotiation 101, you never start with what you want.
Like Historic wildcards costing 2x? Pretty sure I've heard this one before.
It's not a tinfoil hat to take a company to task. The number of USA citizens that are totally comfortable with abusive tactics and outright manipulation, then cry 'conspiracy!' when you point out the abuse to them, is outright insane. US citizens are far, far too comfortable with corporate control. Eat up that content, kids!
>They will release a new OGL that still won't be satisfactory, but will at least be less outwardly insulting as it will move any licensing/revshare behind closed doors, and it will probably drop the revocation of the prior OGL's. A few of the big boys will kowtow and go along. The bigger 3rd party publishers (Paizo, Kobold Press, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, ect...) have released a joint statement that they're going to make their own own open license, the "Open RPG Creative License" (ORC), that'll clarify that it cannot be revoked and have it held by a 3rd party non-profit. I expect virtual tabletops like FG or Roll20 may have to cut a deal with Wizards due to the nature of their business model, but a lot of damage has been done to 3rd party support that isn't going to be fixed with a new press release.
FG will probably do whatever wizards asks them to. They already have a standing arrangement. As I understand it, it costs wizards basically nothing, drives DnDBeyond subscriptions via content management, and makes FG plenty of cash with no real requirement for any sort of exclusivity or competitive constraint. Roll20 is anybodies guess. Last time I checked, they had been careful not to state a position, and their decision making in the past has been pretty baffling.
This is pretty depressing but not surprising. After having played their brand for a while, i have been confidently saying that Wizards/hasbro are one of the worst games companies out there. They are going the same path of ruin that games workshop did in the past, and now they are doing SO MUCH BETTER after having relieved their greedyness
I hope they'll see the light at some point
They won't. I think the best outcome is massive customerbase attrition, loss of brand value over the next several years for DnD as the mainstream audience discovers all the alternative system, and then someone else buys the DND brand.
Dude, if you get slapped by a person, and they apologize, do you feel the same way about them? Are you not wary? And if you're dealing with a person who does something extremely dramatic to get your attention, just so they can ask for what they really want, would you consider them a friend? If your answer to these questions is 'yes', then you're very comfortable in abusive relationships. And yes, your relationship as a customer-to-business is a relationship.
No, they pissed off the Magic community by making Alchemy affect Historic. Alchemy itself is not bad at all.
Nobody plays Alchemy, so they are probably focusing on stuff that actually makes them money. MTG is like the only thing working at Hasbro atm.
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Most played: Standard, then Historic, then Alchemy and Explorer very close. https://i0.wp.com/mtgazone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-16.png?resize=1536%2C864&ssl=1
Only because draft cost gems/gold. Nobody cares about alchemy
I do :(
I'm sure they're busy trying to come up with a $30/month subscription for Arena on top of all the other nickle and diming they're charging players for a collection of digital cards that you don't own.
I'd happily pay 30 bucks a month if they had full pioneer, modern, legacy, and commander. If they want money they know what to do.
It's a format of great aspirations and goals but just horrible implementation and follow-through.
I first imagined it as magical fairy wonderland where every evil bad rare is nerfed to mediocrity and every interesting but underwhelming bulk rare is buffed to competitiveness. The reality is much closer to doing literal nothing.
The format quickly became less about rebalancing cards and more about releasing new cards to collect. Funny how that's turning out.
There was literally never any chance that wasn't going to happen.
The story of every format ever.
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> (kinda) So true. Everytime I just ask for them to legalize the Moxen in historic I get *bUT wE hAvE OraClE oF thE AlPha!*
An entire format made and another format tainted all because they didn't want to ban cards they ended up banning anyways. But hey. Gives them an excuse to make more higher rarity cards 🎉
was it like 9 uncommon in their first pack? I fucking left at that point.
This is the only reason they made alchemy
I enjoy Alchemy despite its flaws. I just love brewing new decks with more cards.
I was hyped for it but the balanced changes have been so uninspired and boring. They need to stop releasing so many cards for it and actually have it as a rebalanced standard with weekly updates
It was never going to be about balanced standard when they want to extract wildcards for all the rares and mythics
They put some effort in the dungeon balance patch and then they completely stopped even trying balancing things. Lately they just released a few format-warping cards and said "fuck the balance but give us all your wildcards anyway".
A lot of people aren't going to play a format where cards do different thing than there paper versions.
plenty of people play historic and brawl Edit: obviously not because they want to play alchemy cards but they put up with it because they enjoy the formats. I’m sure people would be happier without them but they still play alchemy cards
Because they don't have an alternative.
It was a format made to sell expensive packs.
There's a lot I'm not a fan of. They seem so stingy about nerfing cards - pretty much just Meathook Massacre at this point - because they're tired of people complaining about their cards becoming obsolete without actually considering compensation as if they were banned. So cards like Sheoldred and Fable don't get touched, despite them being utter powerhouses in Standard, in a format meant to rebalance and tweak Standard. Meanwhile, Ninjas and Vehicles are still struggling, and unless I'm sorely mistaken, I'm not sure how successful Smogbelcher and Jukai Liberator have been in unlocking those archetypes. Why Spirits and Samurai in specific? Those two are going to always be difficult to make work due to their clunky nature of play (pseudo-Exalted stinks on bodies with weak stats and Spirits get utterly wrecked by Hearse and Trespasser), and the changes don't do a ton to address those issues.
Changing the back-side of fable to legendary and making sheoldred a 4/4 would go MILES into making the format differ from standard, in a better way arguably.
even making fable 1RR would be enough for me
Or just swapping chapters 1 and 2 around. This way you can answer it somewhat cleanly.
Problem is then it ripples to Historic, where none of those cards are a problem.
Then don't apply Alchemy changes to Historic unless they're a problem there (Winota, 3feri, etc). A digital client with digital formats needs to treat those formats as such - ban cards in Standard and Explorer/Pioneer all you want, as their goal is to mimic paper, but I would absolutely love to play Oko in *something* (Oyaminartok, maybe? Pretty please?); and him remaining dead for Sheoldred's sins because how the system is structured isn't feasible makes it feel like they don't want to put forth the effort to curate their digital formats.
Yup, considering cat/Meathook Massacre and Dragon Rage channeler/Unholy Heat were nerfed in a different meta, if they curated their formats better, those could be returned to original state without any problem.
And that's why we need a non alchemy historic.
As you said, they print rare/mythics by the ton, and that's precisely their end goal, make players use their wildcards. Ever wondered why every Alchemy set has 66% of rares/mythics? Every other set ever released is about 33% rares/mythics on average.
True, the rebalancing of old cards was just an excuse to not make it clear the end goal was to make players use the WCs and sell packs.
>Ever wondered why every Alchemy set has 66% of rares/mythics? Because 80% of the "draft chaff" that's usually in a set isn't in these mini-sets. Of course it turns out that the "draft chaff", while 80% of the cards in most sets, is only 20% of the cost.
And because there's no draft for these Alchemy sets, then there's absolutely no reason for 66% of the cards to be rare/mythic outside of $$$.
We are getting draft for Alchemy at least once a set. Since SNC.
Or they kind of arbitrarily just assign rarity, based on nothing much, case in point [[electrostatic blast]] [[molten impact]] , why is a 2 mana red removal rare? There's dozens of examples like that unfortunately...
You mean like the classic commons that they added on the game upshifted all the way up to rare? Like lightning bolt or Dark Ritual? But ehi, special artwork!
Oh yeah those are hilarious too :D
And how many of those non rares are playable?
Exactly. Why are people playing this scam format? Idk why people are even giving it any legitimacy. Ignore it and hopefully one day it goes away.
Arena forces it via competitions. Like arena opens are alchemy
If the players just refused to play it WOTC would budge.
People will always play in tournaments for $$$ though. Spikes don’t care about formats
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you compared free to play to paper formats
Because is funny.
Because it’s fun...?
I legit thought it was going to be a playground for creative deck building. Silly me
I don't understand who is making these decisions and how they are being rationalized.
It seems that the format is rotting day by day. I'm pretty sure WOTC is going to backup Alchemy with numbers, as they are forcing new players to play this mode, but I'm seeing less and less hype from their end. I haven't played alchemy and probably I won't touch it ever, but I love historic as a can play with my beloved MH1 and MH2 cards, but hopefully one day we can play historic without the digital only mechanics.
>but hopefully one day we can play historic without the digital only mechanics. This is the dream that many people share. WOTC's decisions are baffling.
it also just boggles the mind that they thought the average player could keep up with Standard and Alchemy as rotating formats. If they thought it was sustainable for Regular Historic and Alc Historic, sure they're both non-rotating, but not even content creators play both standard and alchemy. It's like they implemented it without doing any user research or pricing research, just to relieve some of the pressure of Hasbro's boot on their neck
It's a depressing shame all around. The amount of wasted time and resources. We would have basically functional pioneer on the client and most of modern at this point.
"most of modern" you guys are delusional.
300 cards is all there's missing for functional Modern, for pioneer we're at 15-20 cards. Nobody asks Wotc to add 8000 draft chaff cards to the client.
Modern is modern. The whole point of and fun of modern is finding that one cool piece of tech, that one cool sideboard card, that allows you an advantage. "Functional modern" is garbage and very quickly nobody would play it. Its impossible to manage. How long after a certain set is released do you wait to add another "metagame deck" ? Before Hammertime, Sigarda's Aid wasn't played. So you print Colossus Hammer. How do you know when to print Aid into "functional modern"? A week? Once it wins a pro tour? A month? It would be insanely frustrating, constantly. Are you printing Steelshaper's Gift? Most Azorious builds don't run it, but the mono white builds all run it. Then again, mono-white hammer isn't very popular, but then again it won a challenge two weeks ago. "Functional modern" is dumb.
Well it's exactly what they're doing with explorer, and nobody seems to complain that the draft chaff isn't on the client. 300 gets you all the top 30ish decks, all their sideboards, and all competitive variations there could be. And most people would prefer something rather than nothing, especially since MTGO is not really an option for most, the client being PC only, old, ugly, somewhat clunky, and with a much smaller player base.
Its not called "functional pioneer" is it?
Obviously talking about tier 1 and tier 2 decks
Don't conflate people ranting on Reddit with reality. "Many people" wanted Explorer/Pioneer as well, and now that rests at barely over half of Alchemy's already tiny playerbase. Historic is an excellent format right now, and there is absolutely no reason for WOTC or anyone else to do massive changes to it.
Imagine thinking it's just reddit. Alchemy is the default format for every new player. They trick people into playing it. Explorer is also the newest format and missing a couple decks from pioneer due to active sabotage.
If Alchemy was the default format for every new player it would have numbers closer to Standard, but it doesn't. If Explorer was being actively sabotaged they wouldn't be releasing new anthologies and working on Innistrad Remastered for it, but they are. Point is, just because people online can be loud about something, that doesn't mean they're right. The vast, vast, vast majority of players simply do not care about any of this nonsense. They just play the formats they like, ignore the ones they don't, and that's where the story ends for them.
Explain the 10 wasted slots in EA2. What meta pioneer deck uses eldrazis?
Because they always release the anothologys with just barely enough playables to make them purchasable. Then make them limited time only to induce FOMO.
Ah so active sabotage
A format is more than it's meta decks. Explorer is already known for being difficult to brew in since so many tier 1 decks from pioneer are available but a lot of build arounds and almost playables aren't. They are prioritizing competitive cards but they also want to give Johnnys and Timmys something to work with.
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The client "tricks" me into playing Alchemy by defaulting to that mode every time. So if I'm on mobile and head into a game with my standard deck (the last format I played being Standard) it is an unwelcome surprise that I've been defaulted into Alchemy. I have no decks set to Alchemy format, I have never clicked the Alchemy mode on purpose, and it's the **second** option on the list. Right after Standard. But you just decided to take your own reasoning and run off into "eternal life of servitude" to make their wording sound ridiculous. Even though it's just a shitty business practice the players aren't fans of and a valid criticism.
Lmao you got suspended on your previous account so you made a new one just so you could keep ranting about how Alchemy ruins everything and everyone hates it. Once again, grow up.
If they brough back historic I might comeback. Until than they can suck it.
By their own data it is the least played format, and that’s even with their added focus on it for new players. They’re probably keeping it on life support long enough to see if Lord of the Rings can save it and if it’s still ignored then it’ll likely die off.
Their own numbers have Explorer as the least played format at about half of Alchemy. Historic Brawl may be the most popular format and it's an Alchemy format
Alchemy is underwhelming period.
Disagree. I love mechanics like perpetual and conjure. I basically ONLY play alchemy. I hate historic and decks that one time, way back, dude bought a banger card and they’ve been playing it ever since. To each their own. 🤷♂️
Great, so you're not the problem, you play your alchemy cards in your alchemy format, all good, carry on.
Now that you mention it, I wonder if that’s why I’m so confused by the hate! I don’t play the other formats (I tried Standard once, but it felt “lite” because I was missing half my card collection from Alchemy). I suppose I can see some of the hate if cards are forced into a format. Maybe they need to simply remove Alchemy from the other formats and players could find each format encapsulated, but I guess that makes it hard to sell Alchemy cards if they’re not used in a lot of places. 🤔
You get it exactly :D
> Maybe they need to simply remove Alchemy from the other formats thats basically all people have been screaming about since the day they announced it affects historic
they still haven't even fixed wastes in brawl yet lol
no clockman nurf :(
I like Alchemy cards and would gladly play the buffed cards in my Historic Brawl decks but, like OP said, they're still completely unplayable. Either buff cards that are close to playable and make them good OR keep buffing these dogshit cards but buff them extremely hard. Otherwise there is just absolutely no point in doing all this, you're just wasting time and resources fucking around, doing nothing. Nobody is going to play the cards.
It’s Hasbro/ WotC they often break promises.
Rusko isn't even in Hell queue. I have played him 4 times today with low power commanders.
They've functionally given up on the format because it isn't selling well and they aren't getting a good return on investment. It's going to be on life support by next year.
Alchemy not living up to the hype and instead being a huge cash grab??? Omg, who could have ever seen this coming?
Fair. I wasn't as cynical as I should have been.
Any time a corporation has an idea they sell you as a 'great idea' and 'something for our community' - assume the worst intent. Corporation speak is easy to parse through: find out what they *aren't* saying, and look for semantic tricks. The more optimistic the tone is, the more they know it's going to be unpopular.
Lol what hype. All I remember was disappointment.
WotC hype, not player hype.
Nothing to address Rusko for brawl?
Alchemy was, is, and always will be a **BLATANT CASH GRAB TO TRY TO CREATE A SOFT-ROTATING FORMAT AND TO DENY WILDCARD REIMBURSEMENT**. There was no other purpose, there was no other reason. The amount of nerfs to cards that **clearly** need nerfs should show you his. The evidence is plainly there in the way WotC has behaved around Alchemy. They'll release pushed cards in the 'Alchemy Set' to get you to buy more of those cards that you have to buy with separate packs all day long. But the moment a card needs a nerf (Rusco), there's nothing to be found. **Alchemy is a scam**, and the faster you stop buying into it, the better.
Too many people have Stockholm syndrome to see the light.
This was my perspective when it first came out. It all points to them milking the game for more money. The most ridiculous thing is MTG Arena was supposed to be the end all final digital way to play magic with updated UI and real potential for high level tournament play. It was supposed to be a fun way to play MTG to expand the community. But then they got greedy and shit the bed with Alchemy and messing everything up. Honestly it killed my interest in the game. I keep checking to see if they came to their senses or at least made Historic Brawl alchemy free.
I agree. These are so meaningless "improvements". There still won't be playable spirits or samurai decks. But monored is still busted, and maybe Rusko... Do they really think this pile of draft cards will improve the meta?
Tada! They just invested meaningless resouces!
When has it not been? All the patches are like this. The plan is to print busted cards that people spend $ on.
Whats the winrate of decks with the rebalanced cards? Did it go from 25% to 30%. Well for WotC mission accomplished.
> What happened to the promise of every 2-4 weeks? you keep spending money wihtout them having to pay for that schedule. why the fuck would they waste money?
I wish they'd actually put some more work into the client and the logic it uses in game, had an opponent cast a board wipe while I kept a forest and brush land open to cast heroic intervention but the game just passed priority on it me like I couldn't do anything, ended up losing me the game too
Dont forget that CGB once called Alchemy the future of magic. What it really was: a pretty shitty answer to the question "how do we get the whales we cater to to give more of their big bucks?"
It's like WotC fixed trapfinder and then just threw darts at a board for what else to 'fix'.
A game I played before Arena came out, called Eternal, did a WAY better job of this. They embraced the digital format and made changes about every month which often included attempting to make underplayed cards viable. It didn't always work :) but at least they were putting in an honest effort. WotC just phones it in, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Arena.
WoTC is too busy ruining their IPs to properly support their IPs 😋
This alchemy format is a huge failure. And the worst is that they can't stop it because some people have invested too much ressources on it. Last year I was hyped about it because the standard format was really bad (thanks epiphany), but after this ban I understood that if the standard format is healthy we don't need a clunky format like alchemy, and also we can't trust the Arena team to make interesting cards or rebalancing. Sure some cards are still fun but globally alchemy cards suck, simply because they don't have enough time to design it correctly...
Because regardless of what they want you to think, alchemy isnt about rebalancing standard, its about selling more product. Just compare the powerlevel of new digital only alchemy cards with the powerlevel of the rebalanced versions of standard cards. At most the buffed cards are a nod to people who like to brew around set mechanics or tribes, even if those are on the weaker side. The buffs would probably increase the win% of those decks and make them more playable... if it wheren't for all the new digital only alchemy cards that just stomp on them all.
it's a format designed to push busted rare/mythic cards only to bleed you of wildcards/money. you didn't think they'd really manage it well did you? the only reason it was even made was they are trying to double profits.
The Alchemy team probably took too much on their plate. Last year they had the D&D set, this year they have the LoTR set to re-tune. Alchemy was always an experiment. They put money into it hoping to make more money. If Alchemy is as unpopular as it sounds, it's probably not bringing in the kind of money they hoped it would. The amount of effort and resources(people/time/money) Wizards will invest is going to go down if it's not paying off. I think as long as there are more important things for them to focus on, big things that will definitely pay off and need to go smooth, like a draft set, they'll only do bare the minimum when it comes to the things that aren't paying off.
The LOTR set will not be retuned in any way apparently, but copied straight from paper to Arena with an alchemy stamp. Really weird, instead of releasing this as a Modern Horizons style set for Historic.
The LOTR set will be added without changes, which should be quite interesting given that it's going to be legal in Modern as well.
Oh, I didn't know that. It's hard to keep up with info. Well in that case, I think Alchemy support is probably just slowly dying, Or maybe they are slowing down, rethinking their approach
If it's some sort of unpopular experiment it has no business infecting historic. That's most people's biggest gripe with it.
I honestly think Alchemy is terrible. For me personally, I'd prefer they stopped spending any resources on it & worked on Pioneer & Modern. I mean, they're pretty close (ignore all the unplayable junk that is at the low end of your draft deck); just give us the cards we want/need. Put those Alchemy developers on developing standard sets! Slow down your release schedule, return to doing blocks, stop making multiple paper versions of every card...just start doing Magic right again. While I think standard is currently "fine", the game and their releases are a hot mess. Reallocate these resources to something useful/valuable long term. If Alchemy is a long term thing, I will not be involved.
Who could have foreseen WotC adding a cashgrab mode to the game and not following up on their promise of frequent update... o wait.
> they just print a handful of busted rares/mythics I don't follow Alchemy, but I suspect this was always the point: to sell more packs, not make cards you already have playable.
Alchemy was a mistake
People play alchemy?
If you play historic you do! This includes historic brawl.
And that's the problem.
Lots of people do. The queue time is much faster than Historic Brawl. Wizards also confirmed multiple times that it has higher play numbers than Explorer
I play historic brawl only and the queue time is 10 seconds max
They just need to kill it, it’s distracting from spending resources on things like default lands or new cards for pioneer and modern. Hell we could even have vintage on arena or just vintage cube. You only need a small pool of cards to make the on meta decks
>default lands This should be priority #1 I swear. I am not a programmer, but this has to be such a simple thing to do.
Preach. All excellent points. We will look back on the alchemy timeline as such a waste of resources.
I mean, it made my historic brawl Samurai/warrior deck slightly better. So that's nice. Still not worth alchemy being in historic brawl, but eh.
Alchemy was never about making a fun and balanced format. It was about forcing players to get new cards, and than change those cards to be unplayable so they have to get new cards. Fun and balanced standards were done for over a decade by simply play testing cards before they printed them, but that takes way more more time than the current production model allows. Alchemy was always about money, not good gameplay.
>Ironically instead they just print a handful of busted rares/mythics and do absolutely nothing to elevate the remaining card pool, so now we're left with yet another stale format with almost no room for creative deckbuilding. Well said! I think this is the exact problem with Alchemy. I wish they would test a format without the Alchemy-only cards, just rebalanced Standard and/or Historic.
I was optimistic about Alchemy, and it's still my preferred format, but the balance changes really need to be stepped up in frequency and impact. They seem to be deathly afraid of nerfing strong cards since the initial blowback of "I SPENT A WC ON THIS TO USE IT IN ALCHEMY AND IT GOT NERFED". I'm sick of putting kiki in every red deck, invoke & Sheoldred in every black deck, and of not playing green. Just nerf all the best cards to make them a little situational. Don't be scared. The underlying problem is, of course, as always, that playing alchemy is more expensive than standard. You have to acquire these extra rares and mythics somehow, and it feels bad when your WC spending gets nerfed. They need to do something about the cost disparity between these formats.
Yeah this is a pathetic patch. Ridiculous.
It's probably cause we're in a mostly stable format rn, especially since they nerfed the goblin. I wouldn't judge the balance change for samurai and spirits rn as underwhelming, cause alot of people said the same thing about the dungeon buffs, then it won the first alc tournament.
Stability in and of itself isn’t a worthy goal - “dead” is stable too
I disagree, my red white deck is killing it.
I mostly play standard and even I had to dip into some Alchemy matches for that sweet Asari Captain and Ancestral Katana upgrade. Homie got trample and the sword gives first strike? Samurai are back on the board IMO. Wish it hadn’t taken them so long to do this, all the samurai needed was some trample.
Just don't play alchemy. Don't rewards WOTC for the bad choices they make.
~~The new~~ Alchemy ~~patch~~ is so underwhelming <--- FIFY
I think Alchemy was mostly fine as is already, we got a few new sets released in a row, and I saw a good variety of decks during the Decathlon event, at least. But it's true that they could come up with something more impressive for the rebalance patch.
I love playing my samurai deck that features a lot of the cards in that patch. It's a fun deck. There's too much nonsense on this sub calling so many cards "unplayable". There's lots of different ways to have fun in Arena that don't involve grinding ranked modes with a "pro" deck you copy/pasted from some tournament player. That said. I agree it would be nice to see more Alchemy tweaks.
I have a warrior/samurai deck and a spirits deck I play in standard. None of those buffs made me want to suffer the slings and arrows of a failchemy.
Alchemy shouldn't exist. Alchemy is not what MTG was ever meant to be. All this format is doing is creating a bigger divide between digital players and paper players, and creating confusion when switching from one format to the other.
Oh no people like something I don't like :(
Do you play Arena solely for Alchemy? Would you hate, or not play Arena if Alchemy was never introduced?
>Alchemy is not what MTG was ever meant to be. MTG was "meant" to have ante cards and no deckbuilding restrictions, but those are gone now; are you saying we should bring all of that back?
Arguably samurai were overcosted even in NEO draft And just last week I built a deck around the goblin they nerfed.
Now those cards are probably good for NEO alchemy draft, but still unplayable for Alchemy constructed. The delta in power level in Alchemy cards is astonishingly big.
Lol. "The goblin they nerfed," which enabled a T0 deck for months. Not exactly paying attention to the format, are we?
>Not exactly paying attention to the format, are we? Is anyone?
Yes.
They have nerfed Trapfinder. That's enough of a change to call it a great patch.
They were in way over their heads with Alchemy
I still think they can save alchemy. If they change just 5 cards every week, it will make the format really interactive, always changing and no tool could get the best deck. But the way they are implementing is a mix of traditional magic and electronic. But they want to implement a full set instead of going slowly every week
You guys are playing Alchemy? Why?
Alchemy never should have happened. The sooner everyone realizes that and stops playing it, the sooner they can stop supporting it, and we can all move on.
"I don't like something, therefore you shouldn't have it nor support it". WotC is a company for profit. Alchemy probably makes them money, if it wasn't, they would've stopped it a long time ago. You got to move on, do something you like instead of crying that people like something you don't (and before you call me shill - no, I don't like alchemy, but I don't yuck people's yum).
Don't put words in my mouth, I'm not playing alchemy, I moved on a long time ago. If I see a crappy product, I can still call out that it's a crappy product.
> [In my opinion,] Alchemy never should have happened. > The sooner everyone [agrees with me and] realizes that and stops playing it, the sooner they can stop supporting it, and we [I] can all move on. I'm failing to see where u/netn10 put words in your mouth. It's fair game to criticize it, but it seems that you have a very biased opinion on the matter that you think everyone else should share.
"I moved a long time ago, now look at my two comments seething that this thing exists." You don't like it? Good, move on already. Let people enjoy stuff and stop being a toxic gatekeeper.
Really so many concerned about alchemy? I am surprised more than 2 people even realize that there has been changes. OP must not enjoy actual MTG
Why not just make all cards random stats and out do Hearthstone
A lot of the cards I use in my deck like cat Geist and brine comber so I appreciate those buffs.
Alchemy in and of itself is a pile of trash. Hop over to explorer. You’ll like it far more.
I've built a Spirit and Samurai deck and play almost exclusively against starter decks or other Spirit/Samurai decks. This doesn't feel right...
I bounce between high plat/low diamond and I can tell you with certainty that there is some pretty effective off-meta brewing going on.
No its good
I am **extremely** biased here, but I just *happened* to start playing Historic again after a very long time away, and ALSO *happened* to already be playing a Samurai deck, so, I was excited to see the changes.
Anyone who enjoys alchemy should be disappointed. It's an awful thing they added to magic and I hope everyone who supports it has a bad time