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By: platipus10, A.C.W.
Jul 06 2009 8:28am
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The Birth and Death of Formats: Part 1

Personal Introduction

Being a new writer I would like to first introduce myself.  I have been playing MTGO since the initial Beta for v1 and I started playing MTG:Pants at around the release of Visions, although I no longer play paper.  I have played the Singleton format since that very first Beta and then I slowly migrated to Prismatic as well.  In paper my favorite format was Extended but that was before there was even a rotation to the extended format and true duals were allowed.  I tried Extended on  MTGO, but just really could not get into it that much.  Standard rotates too often for me as I don't want to turn over my collection every 2 years.  I also wanted a format that allowed me to play a larger variety of the cards that I owned and found that in Singleton and eventually Prismatic.

 

The Death of a Format

The impetus for this article is somewhat interesting.  I have been meaning to start writing articles for quite some sime, and I initially set out to start writing about Prismatic a few months ago.  I had wanted to write a very relevant article to attract more people to the competitive side of the format and figured the best way to do that would be to write a metagame article to make players feel more comfortable jumping into the Queue's and into Premier Events.  To do this I set about collecting as much data from playing in 2-man Q's as I could and I was going to mesh that with data from the Prismatic PEs.  I had gathered around 30+ matches worth of data and was starting to analyze it for my article when WotC effectively killed the format with this simple announcement: (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1164559)

Prismatic

  • Status – Removed from official support
  • Event Support – To be discontinued
  • Prize Support – To be discontinued

This announcement would prove to have a severe impact on my playing and spending habits for MTGO.  It also made me think more about the decisions that WotC makes in regards to the Unofficial or Fringe Formats than I previously had.  WotC's stance has traditionally been that they will support the formats that players will play and the formats that work with their business model.  The second half of that is easy.  While they have not, to my knowledge, explicitly stated their business model the end goal is certainly to make a profit as it should be in any capitalistic endevor.  Thus, we will use the assumption that WotC has profits as a goal wherever necessary in support of the article.  The first half of the statement is the trickier one.  While WotC says they will support the formats that players play, the players seem to play the formats that WotC supports.  This may not be true 100% of the time, but I would like to show just how much that is the case.

Prismatic gave a very recent example of this.  While I am not privy to the exact statistics, it was not difficult to notice that nearly imediately following the announcement that event and prize support for prismatic would be discontinued, play in the casual room nearly stopped completely.  At one point in the not so distant past I noticed that both Prismatic and Singleton 100 would have roughly the same number of active games in the casual room on any given weekday during the evening (US time zones).  After the announcement prismatic games plummeted while Singleton 100 stayed steady and looks that it has actually grown quite a bit recently.  Is this because all of a sudden prismatic players coincidentally decided to stop playing the format at the same time that WotC made the announcement or the more likely scenario that because of the announcement players decided it was no longer a productive use of time to play a format that they would never have a chance to earn any prizes in?  The very interesting thing about this is that not only did the more competitive players stop playing the format, but so did the more casual players it seems.

My theory is that even if a player does not intend to play in PEs at a particular moment, the possibility that PEs or other forms of prize support are potentially available will draw players to a format because subconsciously their purchases and play are justified since they could potentially play for prizes even if they do not immediately intend to.  This is very true of myself.  I have no desire to build, test, and purchase for Prismatic decks if there is no possible way for me to compete in that format even if the previous availability for Prismatic was slim at best (Although under v2 Prismatic tournies fired regularly until the day and time was changed without apparent reason).  The problem for these formats is that once support is removed it is nearly impossible to bring it back once the player base has moved on.  Also once support has started, WotC needs to give some time to build up a player base.  In the case of Prismatic they killed the format only 3 months after bringing support back for the format.  Three months is hardly enough time to rebuild the player base for a format like this.  Myself and some other players had started to try and were gradually attracting more players, but once the discontinuation of support was announced it proved futile to continue efforts to build the community.

An interesting reverse example of this is Pauper.  Pauper was able to get off the ground with a lot of work by some avid players that had to create an entire community with websites and player run events.  All of this work was able to support a certain ammount of players, but it is my estimation that the number of people playing the format skyrocketed once wizards gave official, unofficial support to this format.

 

Kiss of Death

What are the factors that can bring down a format?  More specifically what are the factors that helped play into the demise of the Prismatic Format?  This should be valuable for supporters of other formats to know what types of things need to be avoided if possible to keep their format going.

The following are what I believe to be the Top 4 reasons to the destruction of Prismatic:

  • Lack of Tournament Support
  • Lack of B/R Maintenance
  • Format Stagnation
  • Player Appeal/Aquisition
                     

  • Removal of Tournament Support / Lack of Tournament Support

I've already explained this fairly in depth and it should be fairly obvious that players are going to play the formats that WotC decides to support.  It makes sense for WotC to give support to Standard because Standard will help to drive sales of the current set and helps to support drafts by providing an active secondary market.

The presence of the right support will grow any format.  If WotC decided all of a sudden to give Prismatic it's premier amount of support (which won't and shouldn't happen) players would possibly start to play that instead of Standard.  This would hurt the sales of current sets and also negatively impact the secondary market; it’s not a good idea.  However, what about the people who don’t enjoy playing standard and would rather play the Unofficial Formats?  By not giving at least tertiary support to these formats WotC is leaving money on the table in the form of tournament entry fees.  Giving these formats some support brings in that additional money and also helps them to grow the player base to keep the support they are given.  WotC should especially look at using various tournament structures to find the sweet spot to grow these formats such as trying out lower minimums such as 16 player tournaments.

When tournament support is only given every few months it is difficult to grow a player base because a metagame is difficult to establish, which intimidates newer players.  Most players don't want to enter a tournament completely blind without any knowledge of the types of decks they will play against.  This was the case for every Prismatic PE.  Without coverage or T8 results players were scared off because they didn't want to enter without knowing how to prepare their decks. It also may make it less interesting for veterns of the format who wish to discuss the merits of one build vs another.  This is more productive and interesting with a metagame in mind than in a vacuum.

  • Lack of Format B/R List Maintenance

A B/R List is an unfortunate necessity of nearly every format.  Not all cards are designed with every format in mind and when a card poses significant problems to a format steps need to be taken to correct the issue.  This is no less true for Prismatic than any other format.

The problem is that WotC did something with prismatic that is somewhat unprecedented in other formats.  They started basing B/R decision on the "Spirit of the Format".  This has never been done before and is something that caused a lot of damage to the format.  Historically, cards have primarily been banned that prove to significantly warp the format.  There are a few exceptions like Sensei's Divining Top and Shahrazad, but format warping is the primary reason to ban cards.  The problem when you ban cards based on the "Spirit of the Format" is that you will NEVER get consensus on what the spirit of the format is and you will never gain consistancy in the B/R list.  A lack of consistancy leads to players not being able to accurately predict what will be banned and when.  It also leads to lack of confidence in the creators of the B/R list.  B/R list changes should not be something that come as a complete surprise to players.  It should generally be obvious or at least apparent why things are added or removed.  This was not the case with Prismatic.  Eternal Witness anyone?

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.

 
  • Format Stagnation

This is tied to the previous reason.  No one wants to play a format where the best deck never changes.  This was the case for much of the life of Prismatic.  Tutors were neutered to the point that combo was not competitively viable and control was iffy at best, with the brief exception of Flash Hulk decks.  Aggro was so consistant that it just crushed the other two major deck types out of exsistance.  this somewhat changed when Enduring Ideal was unbanned allowing the emergance of a new deck, but even then it had problems tackling the onslaught of aggro decks.

  • Player Appeal / Aquisition

I actually don't think that Prismatic had much of a problem with player appeal in the abstract.  I think that there are many many players who would find the format fun to play; however, there is a significant cost barrier to the format, which is somewhat inherent to the format itself.  If you take any format and change the deck size to 250 cards instead of 60 cards, decks are going to get more expensive; there is no way around that.  Thus, even if the format had great appeal not everyone could play at least at a competitive level.   It was mainly those who either have been around long enough to have gradually collected the cards, those who have bought many of the cards already for Classic play (the mana was the expensie part and it is the same mana for Classic), or those with very deep pockets.

This all makes for acquiring new players to be very difficult.  It is not a format that new players could just immediately start off with like Pauper, Standard, and Block Constructed are.  However, not all formats should be inteded as such.  Every once in awhile there needs to be a format that caters to those with a heavy investment into the game.  Perhaps Prismatic was not the best manifestation for this or perhaps it will come around again, no one knows.

Conclusion

Unofficial Formats will come and they will go as WotC tries to find the best set of formats to cater to players and to their bottom line.  I hope I have helped give some insight into the demise of one of these formats and the types of things that can spell doom for others.  One thing that I do know is that there is now a void that was once filled by prismatic.  This is a void that playable cards of the past fall into, never to see the light of a tournament again and in the case of Classic Sets they usually just start out at the bottom of that void.

In part 2 of this article I will discuss what makes for a good format and give two format suggestions that I believe can significantly add to WotC's bottom line as well as provide an enormous amount of room for deckbuilding and player experience.


 I would like to thank those of you who managed to get this far.  Please provide feedback if you like the style of this article and would like more similar articles that look at various under explored topics or if you have suggestions for improvement.

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16 Comments

Comments by Zimbardo (not verified) at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 10:19
Zimbardo's picture

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.

card values and casual by mattlewis at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 12:09
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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 by Zimbardo (not verified) at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 12:51
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"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.

card prices as an indicator by mattlewis at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 14:22
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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 by platipus10 at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 16:19
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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 by ArchGenius at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 14:40
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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 by platipus10 at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 16:09
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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 by Bazaar of Baghdad at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 11:54
Bazaar of Baghdad's picture

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 by platipus10 at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 16:05
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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.

How long was prismatic actually playable? by Effovex at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 17:13
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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. by AJ_Impy at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 17:58
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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.

Wandered a little by walkerdog at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 18:12
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5

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.

suggestion by speks at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 18:28
speks's picture
4

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!

RE: Prismatic Origins by Paul Leicht at Tue, 07/07/2009 - 01:29
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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 by Anonymous (not verified) at Tue, 07/07/2009 - 18:32
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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 by platipus10 at Wed, 07/08/2009 - 08:29
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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.