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Battle For Zendikar: "Don't make the same mistake I did"

The mistake BFZ made wasn't focusing on the conflict with the Eldrazi, it was disregarding the things people loved about Zendikar. Setting up the conflict in ROE only to cut directly to "Then the Eldrazi died lol" on the next visit would not have been received any better. The solution was to consolidate - take the things people loved about Zendikar and make that key to defeating the Eldrazi, rather than having a group of random idiots from nowhere fart into the place, declare themselves the heroes of the multiverse, and solve the conflict for everyone.

More on topic, let's use this as an example to illustrate what people are feeling. Now I don't read comics myself so I'm going to fudge some numbers here, but it's just too help illustrate the point.

Let's say a new Spiderman comic is released every two months or so. It's been that way for decades. Every second month, you can look forward to a continuation of the story, characters and world you love so much.

Oh, also in this hypothetical scenario, Spiderman isn't everywhere. If you want Spiderman content, these bimonthly comics are your only option.

Now, one day, the comics start including a couple pages in the middle that have nothing to do with Spiderman. Hell, they often have nothing to even do with superheroes at all. Sometimes it does. Two months ago it was Power Rangers. But this month it's My Little Pony. Next issue is Star Trek, followed by Scooby Doo, then Twilight.

It may not be a big deal. You can just skip those pages, sure. But it's still a little annoying. It breaks up your reading flow, makes it harder to flick through...and these properties are already all over the place. Some even have their own comics already! But like I said, they're ignorable enough.

Then the company that produces these comics announces that they're cutting out two Spiderman comics entirely so they can pump out more comics of these other properties instead.

Oh, and this announcement comes almost immediately after the company said "Don't worry; the extra pages were just an addition. You're still going to get all the Spiderman you used to!"

I’ve always felt the core role of this blog has been one of information. We make a lot of choices in design, and I try to use my various communications, including Blogatog, to walk the players through what we were thinking when we made key decisions.

The challenge with this approach is that it’s very logic-focused. It uses intellectual justifications to explain actions. But the problems I’m often responding to are emotional in origin. I have a good friend who’s a psychologist. He refers to this (using the words of author Robyn Gobbel) as an owl brain solution to a watchdog brain problem.

When someone is hurting, hearing about why the thing that is causing them pain is the result of intellectual decisions falls flat. That’s what has been causing some tension lately here on Blogatog.

It’s clear that for some Question Marks changes over the last few years represent the loss of something key to what makes Magic special to them. To them, the game is losing its heart.

While I can’t necessarily do anything about that, I want to better understand what you’re going through. So I’m using this post to ask players who are concerned with the recent changes to help me understand their feelings. Let me hear your stories about how your lives have been affected by these changes.

Speaking as someone who is, and always has been, in favour of UB, I definitely have Some Thoughts about this.

1. I'm in favour of UB largely because I have long since lost any attachment to Magic's own "original universe". I don't care about Spiderman, or Dr Who, or...Mr Assassinscreed. But I also don't care about Chandra, or Jace, or Kellan, so what does it matter? But I'm aware enough to know that if I did care about Magic's lore, I would be incredibly pissed at being told it's getting cut back so that we can get even more Marvel slop - as if that's not already everywhere.

2. Although I don't care for Magic's lore, you know what I do like? Fantasy. Especially good, traditional high fantasy, the sort that first drew me into the game way back in 2000. The sort that, despite your recent insistence otherwise, really was foundational to the game back then. Even if I haven't enjoyed the story and characters for many years now, I could still enjoy the rich fantasy aesthetic that I love so much. But with Magic's own aesthetic leaning more and more sci-fi and few of the announced or released UB releases fitting that aesthetic, the look and feel of the game is still drifting away from what I once enjoyed so much about it.

3. You lied. I know when people say that it's usually hyperbole for "Circumstances changed to make the thing you once said years ago no longer true", but no, in this case you straight up lied. There is absolutely no way that this decision was made in the, what, five days since you last told someone that UB was "additive", that it wasn't taking away anything, only giving other fans something they like as well? Well now it literally is taking stuff away, and you had to have known about this for months if not years. Feels like statements about it being purely additive were nothing more than a hollow attempt to temporarily pacify complainers in the hopes that they'd have grown to accept it by the time this announcement arrived.

4. It's just too much. Not only 50% UB, but six set releases a year for standard alone, along with whatever supplemental premium releases you're adding to the mix. It looked like you were really taking steps to address the issue of product fatigue, but then you go and completely reverse it with this.

5. You already know how people feel, because you once felt the same way. You're allowed to change your mind, of course, but that doesn't mean everyone else has. If you genuinely don't understand why people don't like this, just remember how you felt 15 years ago and realise that some people still feel that way.

6. In a way, it speaks to a general lack of faith in Magic's own IP. Good franchises don't need to shoehorn POPULAR THING to grow and maintain a fanbase, the fans will come and stay based on the franchise's own merits. Occasional crossovers and nods can be fun, but again - 50% is a lot.

7. There are people out there who love Magic's creative. I'm not one of them, but I know they're there, and there are a lot of them. You must know this too, or you wouldn't have a whole creative team employed. And you've just told these people you're cutting back on the thing you've spent thirty years carefully creating and getting them attached to, in exchange for yet more of stuff that already permeates so much of pop culture. If people like Marvel, they can get Marvel in SO many other places. If they like Bloomburrow, or the Phyrexians, or Jace, there is only one place to go for them. And you're shrinking that space, significantly, in order to push more of the stuff that's already everywhere.

If you don't immediately understand why people would be hostile to that, then nothing that anyone says can help.

I might have some insight on this. I think there's a subtle, but important difference between the two planes.

Kamigawa is modern, but it's also unfamiliar. While it's obviously inspired by culture from the real world, very little about it (from clothing, to food, to tech, to architecture) feels like something we could ever experience in our everyday lives. It's all been fundamentally altered by the presence of magic and magical beings like the kami. And because of that, it feels less like "our modern world" and more like "a constructed fantasy world that just happens to be modern".

But Duskmourn... as much as I love Duskmourn as a concept, it can feel a little too familiar sometimes. Familiar names, familiar clothes, familiar technology, familiar fears. The world that became Duskmourn feels more like our ordinary, mundane world than anything that came before it, so it doesn't feel like constructed fantasy anymore. It just feels like what our own world would be if Valgavoth got to it.

And that can undermine the player's suspension of disbelief. Magic was designed with a distinct constructed fantasy flavor. For some people, Duskmourn's urban fantasy vibe can be too much of a change.

There's a delicate balance to be struck here. When building a fantasy world, it needs to be fantastical and unfamiliar... but it can't be too unfamiliar, because the audience needs familiar concepts to help them navigate this strange new world. So what is "too familiar", and what is "not familiar enough"? Unfortunately, there's not an easy answer for that. For some players, even Kamigawa was too much. No creator can please everyone.

Again, I love the idea of Duskmourn; I'm not writing this to be a hater. In fact, I'd love to see it return someday! I just hope that when it does, it has an identity that's more its own. What was this plane like before the house consumed it? What interesting things did people eat, wear, build, and tinker with? How did Valgavoth warp those things to inspire fear, and how have vestiges of that culture survived despite Valgavoth's efforts?

There's a boundless well of possibilties here. There's a lot you guys did right with Duskmourn; you were really cooking when you served up Valgavoth. But by leaning too heavily into familiar motifs, I fear you might have held yourselves back. Only by embracing the unfamiliar can Duskmourn unlock its true potential.

Great points, very well articulated...that will be completely ignored by people insisting "But Magic has always had robots" or "Something something buffet".

Everything is tropes. All the fiction in the world is made out of tropes. Big tropes are sometimes easier to see than small ones, but the world is tropes.

You cannot tell a story, period, without using tropes. It would be like cooking a meal without using atoms.

It's ingredients.

Some people like more plain stuff. Some people like spice. Some people have bad reactions to some ingredients you would not even think to warn about because they are not some of the 5-8 major allergens.

But most things you eat will have fiber, protein, fat, etc. in it somehow. Whether you make it out of common archetypes, subversions, dynamic or static characters, etc all just depends on the recipe.

You don't call yourself unoriginal for making a cake out of egg and sugar. Don't beat yourself up for making a story with a character and situation, either.

You're absolutely right. But at the same time, you also can't just throw eggs and sugar into a bowl, stick it in the oven, and expect to come out with a good cake. You gotta use those ingredients right; you gotta measure them, balance them, mix them properly, bake them properly.

(And just to make this absolutely abundantly clear, my criticisms are never leveled at the authors and writers who pen the actual story. To continue the metaphor, I'm blaming the ingredients, not the chef.)

....no, no, I think if the ingredients aren't measured or mixed right it's probably the chef's fault. But maybe they're just starting out, or experimenting with a recipe. maybe they're just arranging things they like on the table. Or maybe the audience has assumed it was a cake going very wrong, but in fact, they were making a meringue.

I personally hate meringue and think they taste like styrofoam, but it is a completely legitimate use of eggs and sugar in a bowl. One which I will take one look at and absolutely not eat.

Just to clarify, I'm referring to the world and set presented to us as the cake, not the story as written by Seanan McGuire. I guess I misspoke when I used the chef as the metaphor there, but I hope the point came across nonetheless - I find fault with the world and set, not with the actual written story.

Everything is tropes. All the fiction in the world is made out of tropes. Big tropes are sometimes easier to see than small ones, but the world is tropes.

You cannot tell a story, period, without using tropes. It would be like cooking a meal without using atoms.

It's ingredients.

Some people like more plain stuff. Some people like spice. Some people have bad reactions to some ingredients you would not even think to warn about because they are not some of the 5-8 major allergens.

But most things you eat will have fiber, protein, fat, etc. in it somehow. Whether you make it out of common archetypes, subversions, dynamic or static characters, etc all just depends on the recipe.

You don't call yourself unoriginal for making a cake out of egg and sugar. Don't beat yourself up for making a story with a character and situation, either.

You're absolutely right. But at the same time, you also can't just throw eggs and sugar into a bowl, stick it in the oven, and expect to come out with a good cake. You gotta use those ingredients right; you gotta measure them, balance them, mix them properly, bake them properly.

(And just to make this absolutely abundantly clear, my criticisms are never leveled at the authors and writers who pen the actual story. To continue the metaphor, I'm blaming the ingredients, not the chef.)

I feel like people are using "trope-based" to say "genre-based" or even (and more damning) "vibes-based." Everything is tropes. Every Magic set, to the beginning, is tropes. Right now, though, we're seeing some steps outside the high to low fantasy genres, and we're seeing a lot of creative space running on vibes.

Yes, tropes are everything. But there's a difference between something that features tropes and something that's specifically built around them.

I also want to clarify that despite the complaints, I'm not using "tropes" in a derogatory way, purely a descriptive one. Though even then, I guess I'm more talking about specific references than general tropes.

@zorroaburrito The problem with Dack's death was the fact that they killed off a fan favourite character without giving him a proper send-off in card form. Yes, that sucks, but the death itself was actually fine. Not great (I mean, can anything from that story be called great?), but perfectly fine. Gideon's death though, had so many problems I legit don't know where to begin. I guess I'll start with his arc - which, as I perceived it (I acknowledge that this is the sort of thing that everyone can have a different interpretation of), was about how his martyr complex was a bad thing. It wasn't this great virtue to be admired, it was a flaw which was causing him problems, that he needed to overcome - or at the very least, learn to manage better. So the fact that it's exactly what ends up saving the day, and then being praised by everyone as actually really great and heroic, is incredibly jarring, at odds with what was previously established, and pretty unsatisfying. Then there's Liliana. Her arc (again, as I saw it) was about how she can't keep running from her (metaphorical) demons; at some point, the consequences of her actions will catch up to her and she'll have to face them head on. That starts to happen when she defies Bolas, but the fact that Gids then takes the bullet for her robs that arc of any satisfaction. She doesn't have to deal with the consequences of jack. Once again, she does the Bad Thing and gets away scot free while someone else suffers for it. Then there's Bolas himself. He's supposed to be this diabolical, millennia-old mastermind, with plots upon plots and schemes within schemes (whether or not he actually comes off that way is irrelevant, point is that's what the story wants us to think he is). He spent decades planning this thing, had a contingency in place for any potential hitch...but he somehow didn't foresee the guy known almost exclusively for his martyr complex sacrificing himself to stop him. Even if we charitably assume that Bolas wouldn't understand WHY someone would sacrifice themselves, he should 100% be aware that there are people out there who would, and that Gideon was one of those people. The fact that THAT was what blindsided him just serves to make him look even more idiotic than he already did. But you know, maybe it's unfair to blame Bolas for not seeing that coming, considering it made no sense at all. Gids saves Lili by...transferring his indestructibility to her? Is that a thing that can happen now? Since when could planeswalkers just give their powers to each other like, fittingly enough I guess, trading cards? If Jace ever gets sick of being a telepath, can he just slap Ajani in the face and say "You read minds now", and then in the next set we'll get Ajani the Mind Sculptor? Is that a thing that can happen? Because I don't recall that ever being a thing that can happen, which means the fact that that's exactly what this whole turning point hinges upon feels incredibly contrived. And for that matter, why does doing that kill him? Does Lili's contract just somehow sense that it isn't killing her, so it just decides that Gids is the next best thing? Or did Bolas, in all his infinite diabolical genius, write a clause into the contract that says it's totally cool if someone else takes the bullet for her? How does any of this add up? The whole thing feels like the thought process started and ended with "These types of stories typically have a heroic sacrifice involved, we're out of potential designs for Gideon so chuck him in there".

That's not what "the exception that proves the rule" means! The exception that proves the rule is when an explicit exception proves a rule is in effect outside that case, like "no parking on Fridays" proves parking must be okay on other days.

IMO there is no definite meaning to that phrase, it originated as linguistic drift from "the exception that probes the rule", as in tests the rule.

See also: The semi-archaic "proving grounds" means testing grounds. The B survives in English "probation", as in test-hire or test-release.

My understanding was that it was "We had an exception to the rule and shit went wrong, thereby proving why the rule is in place".

I love this set’s vibe already. I think it was high time Magic stopped being just one thing. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I’m already so excited for this set. I don’t think we’ve had a missed theme yet.

Since when was Magic ever "just one thing"?

Next Set Idea: FANFICTION

You joke, but it would legit likely be better than the actual story!

The real problem is if in the example the top-down world would've been like Biblical Eden, and the end result was a green plane with every creature holding an apple. The problem isn't with the design of the apple but that so much weight is put on the lowest hanging fruit. At this point Innistrad is a great example of older, better design.

These are my feelings exactly. Older worlds like Innistrad and Theros worked because they felt like their own worlds, which happened to be inspired by a real world source. They looked at the atmosphere and feeling those sources created and created their own setting to match, with the occasional Civilised Scholar or Rescue From the Underworld for spice. Newer top down offerings just feel like a shallow collection of references, like it didn't go beyond writing down a list of tropes and checking them off as you went.

I’m not OP, but they might mean “works well the first time you see it, but isn’t great when it’s been copied.”

Magic does have an unfortunate tendency to be like "(Popular Thing) used (trope) and it was good, therefore if we use (trope) it will also be good".

There *is* a point to omenpaths being unstable and unpredictable: the characters _in the world_ can’t just make them appear or disappear at whim. This allows for authors to make stories where connections are possible but surprising and not certain.

Whether you personally like this or not is a matter of taste, but it’s ignorant childishness to say that only “bad writers” write stories in settings where the rules aren’t somehow precisely clarified to everyone, either in-world characters or audience. There are multiple examples of the acknowledged greatest writers of the world that fall on different points on that spectrum, often the same writer in different works. (Related: I know enough physics to be certain that nobody reading this within a decade of me writing it will know even most of the rules that underpin our own world.)

If what you want is a story with a more clearly defined set of rules, guidelines, and certainties, ask for that — but be aware that Magic is an exception-based game, and such properties rarely go together with a clearly defined rules-based worldview for long.

Your thinking is a bit too binary. Speaking as someone who prefers softer magic systems in general, I absolutely agree that things don't need to be "precisely clarified to everyone", but that doesn't mean the only other option, or even the best option, is to have no rules or consistency whatsoever.

Also worth noting is that although other stories might have used poorly defined (or even completely undefined) systems to good effect (also also, important not to confuse "used X to good effect" and "worked despite using X to bad effect"), that doesn't mean that THIS story is using it well for THIS aspect. Context is everything in storytelling, and good uses in some contexts do not vindicate every usage in every other context. Of course, I'm aware that that doesn't automatically make it bad either - there's definitely a discussion to be had, but the way other stories use it is not part of that discussion.

@axiodragic: shrink the scope, like, say going from a multi-plane superhero police force and a most-planes invasion to radically fewer planeswalkers and worlds mostly left on their own with a smattering/spicing of less predictable omenpaths? Or like going from multiverse-ending threats to bunnies vs. squirrels?

It's a fine start, yes, but considering even fans consistently complain of stories feeling rushed and bloated, I'd say they could still be doing a lot better. I can't speak to MKM cause I didn't read it, but I do know that one of the reasons I bounced hard off the WOE and LCI stories was the constant switching between three or four different groups of characters doing different things.

Still, a marked improvement over the Phyrexia arc, which was a massive improvement over the Bolas arc.

circu was originally printed as targeting libraries, but that's been errata'd to just targeting players since there wasn't enough point in having that complication

From what I recall, Circu was only originally printed that way because it was the only way to actually get the abilities to all fit in the text box, a problem that was solved with the more condensed templating later on.

The thing I don't like about Kellan is how people at Wizards (or maybe Hasbro?) keep listening to these kind of statements and then changes get made that silence these people for about five minutes before they start voicing the next thing they hate.

In my history of playing and interacting with Vorthos side of things, it was Jace, then the Gatewatch, then Planeswalkers as a whole, then the story chapters (both length and content; which does have some merit, in my opinion), and now it's Kellan. At the risk of sounding disingenuous, these people don't actually care about anything but themselves and their comfort level and wants. I understand that player feedback and happiness is important, but simple complaints with nothing to back them up and no offering of alternative ideas doesn't help anyone at all.

To get back on topic, because I derailed myself: Kellan is a fine and fun character. Seeing the young man grow into a hero in his own right during Wilds of Eldraine was a great time; his appearance in Lost Caverns of Ixalan was brief, but showed how he's adapted to Ixalani life for his time there; the same can be said for Murders at Karlov Manor and Ravnica. If I'm honest it would've been nice to see him a little more, but I understand that he wasn't the focus of the story, and that you're trying to avoid the whole "focusing on non-natives to the plane" thing. Idk where I'm going with this, but the point I'm hoping I get across is that Kellan (like the Gatewatch, and Jace singularly before him) are perfectly fine and have plenty of story in them, if you let their stories be told.

You can like Magic's story and characters if you want. You can love them. You can absolutely adore them with every fibre of your being! That's great, and if that's the way you truly feel, no one can take that away from you.

What you cannot do, however, is claim that anyone who disagrees with you is simply being "selfish", or that complainers have "nothing to back them up". Just because people disagree over a piece of media, doesn't mean either side is being in any way disingenuous. Reasonable people can have different opinions. That's true for literally every piece of media out there, and there's nothing so special or sacred about Magic that makes it an exemption from that fact.

Like I said, it's perfectly fine to like it. You don't even need to justify yourself; that was your experience, and no one can argue with your experience, it was what it was. But claiming that anyone who disagrees with you is just being "selfish", or just wants to be contrarian, or has no real reason for their feelings or validity behind their complaints, is no different from OP's message (which, yes, is also unreasonable).

You're absolutely right that my previous statement was unreasonable. I see that. What I'd like you to see and/or understand is that complainers in the same vein as OP make these types of statements that speak "for the masses", and that's why evidence to back it up matters. Because changes made to gameplay and story, due to these vocal individuals, impact EVERYONE.

People similar to OP complained about Jace and the Gatewatch, and not long after War of the Spark shattered the Gatewatch. Our beloved Beefslab sacrificed himself for Liliana; and while it was in character for him and I love Liliana, it still hurts and he's missed. Nissa left a little before WAR, and then the novels decided to damage her and Chandra's relationship further; and while it's being repaired slowly now, we don't get to see them as frequently to witness the nurturing and growth that they could show. Teferi and Ajani and Kaya joined the Gatewatch, and Ajani ended up mostly sidelined until DMU; where he was either compleated off-screen or revealed to have been compleated some time ago (still off-screen).

In the case of Kellan: he's supposed to be a main character of the Omenpath Arc. And he was a leading character in WOE, but after that he's only just been around. He hasn't had an intrusive presence in the story, and yet people like OP somehow have managed to say that "everyone" hates him. Looking in the comments shows people saying he has no identity; which makes me wonder if they've read the story at all, since his "lack of identity" is an important facet to his character. While he loves his mother and step(father? Brother? I forget at this moment), he wants to know who his other half is.

So while it's fair that neither side NEEDS to explain their stance on hating or loving characters and media they interact with, it CAN be necessary when the negative side gets listened to more easily than the positive.

Oh I understand that. Like I said, OP's assertion is absolutely unreasonable, and I hate that makes people associate those of us with legitimate complaints who actually want to see the story be better with people like them making wild and completely unsubstantiated claims about what "everyone" thinks.

With that said though, I wouldn't worry about WotC making any decisions based on people like that. They have their own methods of collecting actual data; it's not like they're going to look at some rando on Tumblr and think "Well, hyperrfuzzzysnipper said that everyone hates him, so I guess everyone hates him". They didn't axe the Gatewatch after WAR because of dumb hyperbole. They axed them because either a. That's what they were planning to do from the beginning, or b. They really weren't as popular as WotC had hoped. In the first case, they're just following their plan; in the second, they're listening to genuine feedback.

Regarding Kellan, that can easily be explained through ye olde "familiarity breeds contempt". Even if you just have a vague disinterest in something, overexposure can turn that vague disinterest into active dislike. And you can say his "lack of identity" is an important part of his character, but that doesn't mean people like a "lack of identity", or that it was handled well. Remember, someone interpreting an aspect of media differently to you doesn't mean they haven't consumed, only that they consume it differently. Just like overall opinions, specific interpretations vary from person to person.

Case in point, I absolutely despise Liliana and think that Gideon's sacrifice was one of the dumbest examples of a "heroic sacrifice" I've ever seen (though I agree about Ajani. As one of the only characters I remotely care about right now, having the most attention he's been given in some 15 odd years be not even him, but a mind controlled puppet with his face is endlessly frustrating). Doesn't mean I think you're wrong for thinking otherwise, and I'm not going to assume you didn't actually read it or that you're being disingenuous; we just have different interpretations and opinions, and that's cool.

And since this is already way too long, so I just want to say, I'm also not trying to pick a fight or anything! I just really like discussing storytelling, and you've been cool about it, so if I come off as antagonistic, I'm not being a dick, I'm just oblivious.