Constraints and Defaults - Maro Article

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Lights_A5
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Post by Lights_A5 » 4 years ago

I typically enjoy these articles that are overarching about game design in general and not just about Magic. In particular, I felt like this quote was quite revealing:
If you could choose what chess pieces you played with, why wouldn't everyone just bring fifteen queens and a king.
I've kind of struggled with this fact and this quote really helped me to put things into perspective. I at times think about the philosophies of not allowing red or black to interact with enchantments. But similarly, a bishop on a white square cannot interact with a bishop on a black square. What do you guys think?

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Post by user_938036 » 4 years ago

It really falls on the distinction. His method for telling them apart is simple but obviously effective. Take a rule and break it. Did you just break your game? Then it was a load baring rule. Of course it means they could break important rules without realizing it because they are of course fallible humans but it comes with the territory. It would be nice if there was an easier way to tell which was which but its unnecessary.

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Post by Hawk » 4 years ago

This was an all-time favorite article for sure; really dug it. I miss being able to see comment threads on it, so thanks for starting it!

I wonder if it's timely that he posted this just before a set that he's "Extremely excited for" is formally announced - perhaps there are things in Archery (which we now know is)
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That are constraints we all felt couldn't be broken?

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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

Hawk wrote:
4 years ago
I wonder if it's timely that he posted this just before a set that he's "Extremely excited for" is formally announced - perhaps there are things in Archery [...] That are constraints we all felt couldn't be broken?
The impetus appears to be not Archery but instead a couple of days on Blogatog recently that revolved around Jiang Yanggu and Mowu.

(For those unaware: Mark Rosewater, Magic's head designer, has a blog called Blogatog where every day he answers questions people send in to the blog. He can't answer all of them—he gets over a hundred questions a day—but he can answer a lot of them.)

A few weeks prior to this article coming out, Blogatog had a couple of days of intense questions about Mowu. Specifically the questions all orbited this one: "how come Jiang Yanggu gets to travel with Mowu, when we know planeswalkers aren't able to travel with anyone else?" Some people were even vocally upset about Wizards apparently breaking a rule arbitrarily when they refused to do so other times. I remember someone even asked "so if you can break that rule, how come you can't let red get enchantment removal, since you're busy breaking rules?".

Mark explained the constraints & defaults issue a few times in different ways, wrote out answers like this one and this one, and eventually at audience suggestion put a moratorium on the topic and said he'd write an article about it instead — and here we are.
Last edited by spacemonaut 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by TearsOfTomorrow » 4 years ago

That line is really obvious for someone like me, as it literally defines the whole concept of "game design". Think about it: in every game, competition or even sport, the rules are meant to force the players to do things LESS efficiently and LESS effectively. Soccer forces you to only touch the ball with your feet, rugby forces you to only pass the ball to people who are behind you, basketball forbids you from taking more than three steps while holding the ball in your hand: all these rules make things less efficient for you, and thy do so in completely arbitrary manner, like, there isn't a REASON for forcing such limitations upon you... And yet you accept them. Why? Because without them there would be no sport: in all those examples, if you could just grab the ball with your hands, hide it under your jersey and run to goal, you'd be guaranteed to always succeed, and then the opposing team could just to the same and be guaranteed to always succeed. It would no longer be a sport, it would just be two people, or two groups of people, taking turns in executing one action that is always guaranteed to succeed, which means that the one who goes first would always be guaranteed to win. And that simply isn't fun.

The color pie is the exact same thing.

EDIT: and the people who complain about Mowu should read this, then go outside and play some football, or hit the pool, or get a girlfriend.

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