Cards would consistantly be banned for no reason other than "Spirit of the Format", yet those updates would not be done in a consitant manner leaving many players confused as to when or even if similar cards would be banned. This made players wary of making potentially worthless purchases to enhance or expand deck choices for a format that was already short on players and deck types.
One thing that was quite confusing was that on the WotC boards they asked for input from the player base for improvements to the format and nearly unanimous support for an overhaul to the B/R list was given with many players in fairly close agreement for the most part of the cards that needed to come off of the list and a few if any that needed to be added to it. When WotC revised the list in December it seemed that none of our suggestions were listened to. It is highly doubtful that the people making the decisions sat around building and testing Prismatic Decks to come up with their conclusions and it was also obvious that they weren't using tournament results to base decisions on. There should have been at least some interaction with the players to make the format better or at least even a response in the thread saying that they read the suggestions and comments. Singleton100 seems to be following a similar path with many cards being added to the list without proper reasoning or results to back up the bans.
Another problem was that innovation was stifled due to the banning of good tutors, which would have allowed decks to be built around unique cards and strategies. One way of solving this would have been to restrict tutors instead of banning them. Restriction would have allowed a decent amount of tutors into the format without allowing too many that combo becomes dominant. It also allows a consistant rule to be in place in that all nonland tutors will be restricted and keeps the game varied in that you will draw different tutors in each game.
WotC has stated several times that they do not like to restrict cards because restriction makes games even swingier since the person lucky enough to draw the restricted card has a great advantage. This is not really the case when used in the fasion that I described above. In this case we are using restrictions to limit the number of a certain type of card in the format rather than completely get rid of a certain card or effect. If they thought it is ok to have 4 good tutors in the format instead of banning Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Mystical Tutor, and leave (Imperial Tutor) unbanned fo. They could instead just restrict them all. This still has the same net affect of 4 good tutors, but it is consistant instead of players wondering why one was left and the rest gone. Leaving a limited number of tutors in the format would have made for a much more interesting format as many more deck types would have been viable.
This seems to be the approach that was taken by 5-Color, a similar paper format. In fact if WotC would have wanted to give more appeal to paper players and do less work themselves, they could have just mirrored the 5-Color list and been done with it. While not a perfect solution it would have been better than what actually happened and is something that many players suggested over the years as a solution.
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16 Comments
I never played Prismatic, but I did occasionally visit the threads where Prismatic players reacted in disbelief to the latest round of weird B/R changes. I hope they've learned something from that lack of coherence.
I'm hoping that they are dealing in a different way with Singleton 100 and with casual formats in general. The weekly tournaments seem to be a good thing, and my optimistic theory is that they plan to use the incoming data from them to improve the B/R lists soon.
I agree that Prismatic has probably left a void. It should be good for Wizards to have a bunch of different formats, particularly as they continue to grow MTGO and the player base gets big enough to support more niche formats, or make the existing niche formats stronger. Multiple formats make more of the card values go up, which is good for their business. The multiple formats also get more players in, because there are some players who just aren't into std/ext/classic.
One last thought - it's weird to me that they have grouped four formats together and called them "casual formats." (kaleidoscope, 100CS, pauper, standard vanguard). "Casual" is the wrong word for those formats. Also, they say that their business model is to use those formats to get people to jump into the other formats. I think that is also the wrong approach.
Zimbrado, card values have nothing to do with how MTGO is doing as a business venture for Wizards. They make their money through store sales. There is no causation between the two, however there is correlation.
A healthy demand for singles, as a result of formats that people want to play, translates into demand for the game in general. If prices of single cards get too high, people will end up cracking packs for them. For example, when I was getting into pauper, I scoffed at paying the singles prices for Crypt Rats and River Boas (1 to 1.5 tix if I remember correctly), and instead cracked packs of Visions from the store to get what I wanted.
And as for the formats you mention in your last paragraph, if not 'casual', how should these formats be classified? What is your definition of casual? Casual to me is a format that isn't played at a high level of competition, so the design space for decks tends to be less explored, leaving room for innovation and pet decks.
"card values have nothing to do with how MTGO is doing as a business venture for Wizards"
So what you're saying is this: people crack more packs if prices are high, but that has nothing to do with the success of the MTGO business. What the hell?
"Casual" to me means less competitive. I think these formats are competitive, so I disagree with the label. I also disagree with the notion that these formats are only there to lead people into the "real" formats.
I realize I presented a confused argument. However, I still say that MTGO, as a business venture, does not rely on card prices. It will succeed or fail based on sales of product and event tickets, not because of card prices. One could imagine an increase in the player base, so that more packs are opened in a given period, but see no changes in card prices. In this case, card prices gives you no information on the health of MTGO as a whole.
I disagree and agree with Zimbardo. While MTGO may rely on product and event ticket sales, the sales of these product in part are influenced by card prices. Higher card prices lead to more valuable packs, which likely leads to more packs purchased for drafting or cracking.
It certainly is possible for product sales to rise for other factors as well, which may or may not have any affect on card prices. The argument is not that card prices dictate product sales, but that card prices are one of many factors that helps to influence sales, and anything that can benefit sales should be something that WotC should potentially pursue.
My major issue with classifying formats as casual or competitive is that it is a very heavy handed way of WotC telling us which formats we should be playing.
How competitive a format is highly dependant upon how much time good players are willing to spend playing and testing decks for that format.
By classifying formats as competitive or casual, Wizards is trying very hard to tell us which formats to play. As I see it, the problem with this philosophy is that it completely ignores what formats we enjoy playing.
It's like if you had a Candy Store that sells Chocolate and Lollipops. As a business owner you think you're going to sell more Chocolate than Lollipops, so you order 6 boxes of chocolate for every 1 box of Lollipops. Then after a while you realize that you're always running out of Lollipops. So instead of changing the quantity of Lollipops and chocolate you buy, you raise the price of Lollipops so you don't sell them as quickly and hopefully more people will now buy your excess chocolate because its cheaper when compared to the more expensive Lolipops.
What Wizards does with these "casual" formats is like this. Wizards is not very responsive to what its customers want. Instead they change the cost and support of the casual format in order to steer people into buying more chocolate (competitive formats).
I actually was planning to discuss something similar to this casual vs competitive labeling terminology in the second half of the series. I already planned to discuss what WotC's underlying goals are so that I can analyze some of the criteria that any new formats would have to fill.
I will use some of this discussion to help with what I write.
Thanks
First off, I loved your card pics as they highlighted the article themes in a cogent, wistful way.
Secondly, I think your title is off; if not, you gave us no indication in your original thesis how this is going to be rectified in part 2. The problem is this: We have the analysis of the death of only one format (Prismatic), and tangental analysis of the birth of a second (pauper). In fact, all the analysis on the death side focused solely on Prismatic; to be convincing, you need to show how those same effects apply to other formats. Would other formats have differing indicators of decay?
For what it's worth, I think the 'Spirit of the Format', so called, is a fine way to make a banned list. And fortunately, it's not a democracy where people have to agree on anything; it's a supreme dictatorship by the WotC oligarchy. The problem is that they did have obvious inconsistencies in the case of the Prismatic banned list, appeared not to listen to the public despite soliciting their advice, made late decisions, did not try to correct their mistakes (instead they killed the format), and blamed their mistakes on lack of support. If WotC had done this right, the spirit of the format, as they ultimately see it, could have been a fine yardstick to measure by. So, my point: while I agree with certain principles you espouse here regarding WotC's abominable behavior here, I don't like the logic you used in this particular argument.
I think you make great arguments outlining Prismatic's demise and a few indicating the rise of Pauper - maybe you should have left your topic at that. If you're insistent on outlining the death of formats (plural), maybe you could speculate on Rochester Draft, 60-card singleton, leagues, Momir, Vanguard, etc. Finally, is death of a format a good thing or a bad thing? Take a stand and persuade me one way or the other. Good luck on part II!
Thanks for the constructive advice BoB,
I perhaps did not make it clear that Pauper was not the birth of a new format I was talking about. I did use it as a counter example to some of my logic. The second part of the article is where I intend to talk about the possible birth of 2 formats.
I had originally wanted to talk about those 2 new formats first but once I started writing it became clear that it would work better if I did it in reverse. I guess it is unfortunate that the title implies that I would talk about new formats and then the demise of an old one. This is also the reason i used Formats (plural) for the title, because in part 2 I will be talking about the others. I could have talked about Singleton 60 because I was an avid player of that before its death as well, but honestly had just forgot once I became wrapped up in writing about prismatic.
There were substantial bugs in the deck filter for prismatic for most of V3's life. In between the lack of B&R updates and the deck filter bugs, the format was only really playable for a couple of weeks before it was killed. After they announced the "revival" of the format, I had bought a lot of cards to build a black/red Prismatic deck using hybrid mana and split cards to satisfy the color requirements, intending to take it to tournaments, but I was unable to join with the deck I had built. It took them months to fix this problem!
Interesting analysis. Prismatic was always one of the most awkward formats to build for given the deck size and color requirement. An interesting point of comparison can be made with Tribal Classic and Tribal Standard: Purely anecdotally, I have very little trouble getting a Tribal Classic game going, but it is exceedingly rare to see Tribal Standard these days. This has relevance because initially Tribal was a purely casual format, with Wizards adding tourneys and prize support later. The unintended consequence of this was Classic decks getting shoehorned into the format restrictions, which led Wizards to split off Tribal Standard and no longer support Tribal Classic as a tournament format.
When they initially made that announcement it seemed that the Classic side of tribal was being eradicated: This led to substantial uproar and the creation of the Classic to assuage the nerd rage. Shortly before the change from V2.5 to V3, they added a third tribal format, 'Lorwyn Tribal Standard', to coincide with an offline promotional format. The main difference there was noncreature Tribal cards counted towards the deck restriction. That version never made it over to V3, and the remaining formats were further impeded by the Changeling bug in which Changelings and Mistform Ultimus were no longer counting towards the restriction. That bug was eventually rectified.
As it stands, Tribal Standard is no longer supported either, and Tribal Classic still has a small but consistent following as a casual format.
Very enjoyable. History lessons are always fun, and this was well-written. Also, I think it is good to point the finger at WotC when they blow it as they did repeatedly with Pris, both in terms of the B/R and support for the format. You wandered around a little, but I'm often guilty of that, so I can't complain too much about that.
I think you needed to start out your article defining exactly what prismatic is.
I don't think every reader will know what is prismatic (myself included), especially when you say that it's not a popular format. Only until the very end, in the player appeal/acquisition section did you finally mention that prismatic is a 250 card format, and a small lightbulb finally clicked in my head with a vague recollection of something like this ever existing on mtgo. I think this kind of information is sorely needed at the beginning of the article.
But regardless, I had no clue what prismatic is and I still read your entire article and enjoyed your analysis, so props for an interesting read!
Back in 2000-01 K. Hahn (I think thats how his name is spelled) came up with something called 5 color magic. Which at first seemed a rather odd name and idea. 250+ cards? All 5 colors must be represented in quantity? etc. Soon I noticed pros and semipros at PTs with nothing better to do but sit around and play casually as they pulled out these wopping decks and had at each other.
Eventually the format became so popular offline that it started to bleed into the online game when that took off. Prismatic was the result of that. It isn't the same as http://www.5-color.com/ but it echoes it strongly. WotC took over the rules of the game in order to make it an official format.
I for one never had a chance to play it online competitively because when tourneys were available I didn't have the cards and when I started to have the cards the Version changed and I didn't have access and now that I have access again the format is virtually dead. Not entirely. I was able to pull a few games today in casual but it was a good 5 minute wait between opponents.
Anyway nice article...if a bit dramatic. I think the way things work at WotC Prismatic will get its turn again. I noticed that the V3 support for prismatic deck building is rather thin ....(numbers become blurred as your deck numbers get closer to 250) and I had to check the stats> format tab alot near the end of the build to make sure I wasn't going over the minimum. Hopefully V3 will iron out the kinks of large deck builds and prismatic will see a come back...right after they bring back leagues of course. :)
As a casual prismatic player I and some others think all the hybrid cards made it way to easy to play monocolored (or close to monocolored) decks. This seems to me to go against what the format is all about. I would like to see some type of deck construction rule change that would keep the format more multicolored, which is what it was all about before the advent of hybrid cards.
-mullaccm
Monored wasn't really doing well in tournaments though, so there was really no need to change it. These decks also have to play many suboptimal choices because if the limited amount of hybrid cards from which they could choose. I personally don't think it goes against the format, but this just shows how the "spirit of the format" can mean many different things to different people. Now if mono colored decks were winning all of the tournaments and filling the T8s then that would indicate that something might be wrong, but as it stood there really wasn't any problem like that.