Carry on my wayward son
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more
The future sucks. No, seriously.
Pondering an uncertain future is one of the least pleasant things to do. Part of this is the fact that humans, as a group, are risk-averse. And one of our strengths, as a species, is that we are amazingly creative. In this way, we are our own worst enemy. We can all imagine horrible futures. It has been said that we are all afraid of change, but why?
I think it boils down to this:
– Things are good now. Maybe not perfect, but good.
– If things change, they’ll be different.
– Different could be bad.
– If they don’t change, there is a 100% likelihood of things being good.
– 100% Good > ?% Good
I woke up on Wednesday to a veritable storm on Twitter, talking about these changes. I then read the article in question and the associated interview. I tend to be a big picture thinker, I took a step back and looked at this announcement as only one in a series of events.
Does anyone else feel like this past year, Wizards hasn’t really seemed like themselves?
We are used to getting fantastic sets, both in limited and constructed, and Wizards R&D, Creative, Brand, Organized Play and all the other departments have been firing on all cylinders for a while now. It showed, the game is growing and by some reports the numbers are the highest they’ve ever been.
Then Caw-Blade happened.
It was able to dominate so well because Valakut was printed and killed Jace’s primary predator: [Card]Vengevine[/Card] aggro decks. Then [Card]Deceiver Exarch[/Card] was printed and we were told that the FFL didn’t catch that [Card]Splinter Twin[/Card] was still around. [Card]Batterskull[/Card] was also printed, which was like Stoneforge Mystic’s BFF. Competitive players loved this skill-testing, interesting Standard, which had an extremely powerful Combo deck and an extremely powerful Aggro-Control deck. However, the newer players did not like this. [Card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/Card] had reached an unreasonably high price on the secondary market and was one barrier to entry. Play skill was another, as the pros would just about always win the Caw-Blade mirror match against someone less battle-tested. Then Wizards made a set of Standard bannings, the first in 7 years. This was a loud message.
Wizards had changed Extended last year from a 7 year format that didn’t see much tournament attendance and was AWESOME to a 4 year format that saw even less tournament attendance and was TERRIBLE. Do you think Modern is interesting? That’s what Extended was, before the changes (Mirrodin – forward). However, Jace & Stoneforge decks were tearing Extended a new one as they were far-and-away the best thing you could be doing. Wizards listened to the player community who told them about this and changed the Pro Tour from Extended to Modern. This was a fantastic decision (I would like to give the utmost props to whoever pulled the trigger on this one) but was done last minute and hastily. This is the first time in my memory that this has happened. (I’m sure it has happened before, the 3 guys who have counter-examples please let me know in the comments)
Then the Pro Tour happened (Pro Tour Charbelcher – I kid) and Wizards saw what the new format was and banned a bunch of cards. I’ve never witnessed the birth of a brand new format in such a way, so this might be actually in line with what was done with things like the creation of Legacy and Extended and other formats that were created out of thin air. But it certainly felt like Wizards was shooting from the hip.
Wizards then announced a large, large increase in the number of Grand Prix tournaments! And, the formats of these Grand Prix would be more distributed, so all formats would be more relevant year round! This was awesome, well sort of, it’d be nice to have some more in Canada or in the Northern parts of the US, since I haven’t really seen that many that are easy for Canadians to get to (we play your game, Wizards, we promise!). We’re still waiting on the rest of the schedule, but I can certainly see this being a positive change. But wow is this new! I enjoy Grand Prix tournaments, I just can’t really travel very far to go to them, unless the payout on things like Grand Prix trials were increased across the board to involve some portion of a plane ticket. I can’t remember such an aggressive expansion of the Grand Prix system.
Innistrad spoilers showcased an interesting new mechanic – Double Faced Cards. This was unprecedented, as Wizards toyed with something that literally has been untouchable since the start of the game – the card back. I believe it was in Arabian Nights that some people in R&D wanted to print a different back for the Arabian Nights expansion, but someone else told them how ridiculous that would be. Imagine a deck of playing cards where the red cards had a red back and the black cards had a black back! Many people complained, but after playing with the double faced cards they don’t pose that many problems. I was in the “wait and decide after actually playing with them” camp and was relatively pleased. However I don’t like the Checklist cards that much, I only play with sleeves now and this dictates which sleeves I am able to buy, in practice.
Then Planeswalker Points were announced. This was a radical new change. It fixed a lot of problems I had with the old system: people who just sat on their ratings and barely ever played at all, because people respond to incentives. However, it created some new problems. The multipliers weren’t quite right, they needed some more tweaking. It felt like there was some design space there that wasn’t being tapped. Some of the new programs felt clunky and unappealing. The current implementation literally rewarded people who could play 8 rounds every Friday and go to every Grand Prix, even if they were only mediocre. To wit, you can’t always lose but you don’t have to come anywhere close to always winning. The biggest thing though, by far, to come out of this announcement is that qualifications for Pro Tours are no longer given out from finishes at Pro Tours or Grand Prix. This makes sense, if you double the amount of Grand Prix you have to do something. But they could easily have changed the system so that it is just Top 8 or Top 4 of the GP that gives a Pro Tour Invite. Or that Top 16 instead of Top 50 qualifies from the Pro Tour. It seemed bad, but some people were optimistic there would be some upside to losing all these invites.
This brings our narrative to Wednesday’s announcement. Here is the link. But you didn’t come here just for links!
Here’s my analysis:
Worlds, in its current implementation, is no more.
In its place, we have something more similar to the Invitational, except I remain unconvinced this tournament will feature the best of the best as the Invitationals seemed to. (And the winner doesn’t get a card)
This wasn’t actually announced, more like snuck in, but there will be one fewer Pro Tour in 2012 – this is why Samuele Estratti is already qualified for that competition. Aaron Forsythe has said on Twitter that this is only due to transitional concerns and that there would be 3 Pro Tours in 2013’s season. The fact that this wasn’t addressed in the article tends to make people feel like they’re being lied to.
Since Worlds is gone, Nationals no longer feeds a Pro Tour.
The Professional Point total for an entire year is what determines who makes it to this 16 player World Championship.
The titles Player of the Year and World Champion will be presumably amalgamated into one title for the winner of this 16 player tournament.
The fact that Pro Points no longer exist in their current form necessitates the changing of how voting for the Hall of Fame is done.
Here’s my best bullet point:
For next year’s Worlds season, we have 50% as many Pro Tours as this year (I count Worlds as a Pro Tour). Also, we have lost our version of the Olympics, the Team Worlds competition. This competition was the easiest/best way for people to get to a Pro Tour.
This announcement feels like Wizards pulled the trigger on it to soon. It’s only half an announcement. There’s still no replacement to the Pro Players Club. The announcement promises that they will continue to work to ensure that the game’s highest level events continue to showcase the best talent we currently have available. I believe that. But what has the past year shown us?
That, of late, Wizards has been shooting from the hip.
Many of these changes seem good but unpolished. This is surprising to many of us, since we are used to seeing an incredibly polished product that continues to deliver. The question begs to be asked:
Have people been consulted on this decision? I don’t even mean externally, I mean internally.
Mark Rosewater has an excellent column on Design, that runs every Monday on Wizards.com. I don’t always read every article there but I try never to miss Rosewater’s column (titled “Making Magic”). He talks about how good design is grokable. About how when design fights human nature, human nature wins. About the importance in communicating your theme. About not overwhelming the players with too much at once. His column (a 2 parter) on the 10 principles of good design was illuminating.
Here’s why I bring this up:
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that getting to the Pro Tour is a game. Richard Garfield coined the term ‘metagame’ to refer to the game outside the game. Assume this ‘metagame’ is: “I want to get to the Pro Tour”. If this was a game Wizards had designed, here’s what we’d be saying:
Well, those PWP multipliers should have been tweaked by Development, as the incentives are slightly off, especially FNM. Why is someone who works Friday nights inherently less worthy to go to the Pro Tour or FNM Championship?
Design pushed to release 4 sets a year, not 3. Players like more opportunity, not less. I hope to one day go to a Pro Tour, I don’t really care where it is, what format, which one it is.
People will try to game the system. The holes in the system should have been caught by the Future Future League.
The more grindy a game is, the less prestige it has. This should have been caught by Brand.
This change will push out pros, who are media personalities at this point and some of the best faces of the game. Creative could explain how important these protagonists are.
And that would be the Wizards we’re used to. Surely, the outcome of the current system is predictable. As the open letter on Planeswalker Points signed by 5 of the game’s best wrote:
1) People respond to incentives.
2) People respond to incentives.
3) No matter how much you think people respond to incentives and how many times you think you’ve taken this rule into account, they respond to them more.
———-
Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high
Where do we go from here?
The answer to that question flows from the answer to this one: “Why do you play Magic?”
I have never been to the Pro Tour. But it is the hope, the conceivable ideal that if my play is tight enough, I could make it there. That is responsible for a large portion of my continued interest in the game. I fully believe this interest is present inside every single competitive player. No-one goes to a PTQ if they don’t want to play on the Pro Tour. And why wouldn’t they? Play the Game – See the World. By competing in something I’m good at I am flown around the world if I succeed and have the opportunity to meet interesting people from other countries as well as some of the game’s superstars. This lends a very important element to competitive Magic: Prestige.
People play things competitively in order to win something that matters. This holds true for most activities. A prize that is easy to win is not even really worth winning.
Implementing the Elo ratings system in the first place was an attempt to legitimize Magic. A way to say “take a look everybody, this is a legitimate contest and worthy of pursuit.” Prize money and the promise of exotic travel helped as well. Nationals tournaments that fed a Team Worlds competition was one of the best ways to say to people – here is a reasonably accessible way for you to compete on the World stage. Because there were all these different chances for us to achieve our goal, it wasn’t unreasonable to put a significant time investment into the game. Anyone could show up, grind in to Nationals and take it down, since the format is Standard/Core Set draft, the most accessible of formats.
The illusion was – “Anyone could make it to a Pro Tour. Anyone could make it to Worlds.”
I argue that’s gone now, as it stands. It remains to be seen whether something can come along and restore that dream.
The current picture painted is: “You have to be somewhat good, but nothing too far from middle of the road. But you do need to spend all your spare time grinding. If you live in an area that has 5 round FNMs (with Top 8 ) and has access to a large amount of Grand Prix and SCG Opens, don’t punt, since you seem to have this game locked up.”
The game seems no longer like a cross between chess and poker. It seems more like a cross between World of Warcraft (the computer game) and, well, World of Warcraft (the TCG).
Here is why this system lacks prestige – it does not reward its best.
I’m not going to expand on that, because I have made my point – the current system does not reward the best Magic players. Someone could literally never lose a game of Magic ever and never make it onto the Pro Tour. He could be a 4 time Grand Prix Champion, but nope, not good enough for the Tour? Also in this situation his car mysteriously breaks down every time there’s a PTQ. Use your boundless human imagination!
Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I’m dreaming
I can hear them say
There has been what I would describe best as “an outcry”.
—————–
Twitter aside: If you have a smartphone, download the Twitter app and create an account. You don’t ever have to say anything! Just listen, there are so many conversations going on all the time! Here’s my Magic Twitter 10, in no particular order, with a snappy nickname to go along with each:
@maro254 – the Eccentric Genius
@mtgaaron – the Candid Boss-man
@thepchapin – the Innovator (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it)
@PVDDR – the Portugese Prodigy (the language, not the country)
@mtgmedina – the Saavy Shark
@LuisScottVargas – the Punderful Pundit
@kaibudde – Team Kai
@Jonnymagic00 – Team Jon
@G3RRYT – the Cool Curmudgeon
@bmkibler – Staying Excellent
BONUS
@manadeprived – Captain Canada
I feel like Team Jon vs. Team Kai is some unexplored design space. A competition in the style of the playoff at PT Paris would be pure awesome if it were Jon vs. Kai.
——————
Having never been to a Pro Tour or placed in the Pro Players Club, this puts me in the majority. I want this on record as someone who has never directly accrued any benefits of the Pro Players Club or Worlds or a Pro Tour adding my 2 cents.
I would like to point out that this is not a subset of players whining about how things aren’t going to be the same anymore. At all the announcements in my list above, there were detractors. But there were also protractors! What? What do you mean that has a different meaning?
Again, this feels like Wizards just shooting from the hip. Removing Worlds? That seems ridiculous! Will Regionals see lower attendance? Regionals qualifies you for Nationals, but does that even matter anymore? I’m going to use my Olympics metaphor again. Why would we want to get rid of the Olympics? It’s something everyone can aspire to! A chance to showcase talent on the world stage!
I am pleased to see my opinion is relatively in line with the Pros.
There is a Facebook group called “Begging WotC to reconsider destroying worlds”. There is a petition at change.org that you can find here. If you are bothered by this, speak out! The barriers to getting your voice out have almost never been lower.
Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don’t know
I do not claim to have all the answers. However, if someone from Wizards were to ask my opinion, here’s what I would say:
1 ) Stop FNMs from running Top 8s. Not hard to implement in the software, makes things less ridiculous.
2 ) Let Development tweak the numbers on those multipliers. If you win a Grand Prix or Pro Tour, you should be much more rewarded than the current system indicates.
3 ) Keep Worlds in its current implementation. Nationals here in Canada has been having more and more players each year. This is not a trend we want to reverse.
4 ) Make the System more transparent. I’m sure this is going to be done at some point (upgrades to the web site where PWP are tracked, enabling sorting by region for example), but I might humbly suggest this work be done before the roll-out of the new system? If it wasn’t fully fleshed out, perhaps it could have waited another year?
5 ) Let R&D put the system through a re-design. No, seriously. Design it like a game, and assume the goal of the game is “get on the Pro Tour”. Let design add and take away things and let Development play with the numbers. The tenets of design currently employed by R&D would go a long way to solve this problem.
6 ) Give invites (but not plane tickets, they cost money, I understand that) to more than the top 100. I would take an invite to a Pro Tour in Japan with my bare hands, even if it came without a plane ticket. I would save up my money and it would be the highlight of my month, if not my year.
7 ) More PTQs. A PTQ close to a player’s home town is often the first taste of competitive play. Expand your market! Competitive play drives demand of your product. (Casual play does too, I know)
8 ) At least one invite to a Pro Tour from a Grand Prix. Even if it’s just the Grand Prix winner, at least this way Grand Prix tournaments aren’t just a place you go to farm Planeswalker points.
9 ) Restore some Prestige to the game. This is the premier game of Wizards of the Coast. Make it something worth shooting for! Make World Champion a meaningful title!
On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I’m like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say
Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
Now your life’s no longer empty
But surely heaven waits for you
Hope springs eternal.
I remain hopeful that Wizards will reconsider letting Worlds die. If Worlds dies, and following that, the Pro Tour does, the game will begin a slow decay.
All good things must come to an end. But the time to fight it is now.
Thanks for reading
Johnathan
song credit: Kansas – Carry on my Wayward Son
Johnathan Bentley has been diagnosed with Brewer’s Disease and as such is compelled to try new things, rather than stick with boring ‘stock’ decklists. Aside from winning CMT Ottawa 2011, he has yet to put up an incredibly notable finish – this makes him: Under the Radar.