What Makes Bad Games?

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hyalopterouslemur
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Post by hyalopterouslemur » 4 years ago

I honestly don't think people "don't like Stax" per se, as much as they hate the more oppressive Stax builds. You know, the ones like Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Arcane Laboratory, Mycosynth Lattice and Null Rod, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and Knowledge Pool. Getting hit with one of these pretty much means you have to concede. They can be avoided, but since not every deck can run Aura Shards, and it's also a Stax card, you see where this is going.

After that, it starts to just look like people complaining that counterspells/land destruction/discard exist. (And of course in a multiplayer format, all of those strategies are significantly weaker.)
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Maybe it's just time we suck it up and put sol ring in the command zone where it belongs ;) THAT IS A JOKE SHELDON!
no it's not, do it

if you don't, i'll say my voice isn't heard!
incoming spike on mental misstep :P

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Post by Couver » 4 years ago

For me it is the social interaction. That's what I enjoy most about the game. The politics and discussion that spring up around games. If the social interaction is negative I think the whole game suffers.

Yes there are some cards that are not-fun and backbreaking but I have less issue with those. I'm a fan of letting people play the style of deck they want. I just like to turn things sideways and voltron but if someone else likes stax or comboing out it isn't my place to judge that. The variety of deck styles is actually a strength of this format. I hated seeing the same 3 decks when I played standard. With EDH it's super fun to see the legends people pick and what they brew.

But players that get way too salty if their board or play is interrupted with a legitimate answer from someone else and who just drag the atmosphere in the game down into very awkward levels of uncomfortable hurts the game. And also players who carry over issues from one game to another. I think what happens in game should stay in game. If it is getting you that angry then you aren't having fun and if you can't leave it behind you then that is a problem.

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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago

incoming spike on mental misstep :P
And Artifact Blast.

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Post by Hitzel » 4 years ago

[mention]Sheldon[/mention] My playgroup and I are all new to magic (started playing November 2018, started playing Commander in December) except for one long-time player who taught us how to play, so perhaps me describing to you my learning experience as a new player will be useful for you if I also outline the issues we faced. This is not just because we're beginners, but also because I have noticed that our expectations and values are different from what I see in the greater magic community, seeing as we don't have experience with magic or preexisting mindsets about how magic should be played.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I'll list to you the primary problems we faced in chronological order and how we solved them.

1 - "The Arms Race" - We started with a booster box of Guilds of Ravnica. From there, some people started buying new cards via boosters and others started researching and buying super cheap singles online. Very quickly, the people buying singles built up a massive advantage over those who weren't and we started running into feel bads when certain people seemed unable to win.

Solution - Once we recognized that this was happening, we established a plan that we would start working together on making sure that everyone gets to have good cards. While it's always fun to show up with a crazy and unexpected new card and do something wild and nuclear, about once a month we sit down as a group and recommend to each other a few budget cards that we feel will make each others' decks more powerful and serve as ways to deal with the decks and strategies of others. At first this created some concerns about peoples decks just getting hosed, but we found that following the path of "having counters for the counters" has created an environment where we can have a lot of back and forth controlling the state of the board that dictates who can attempt a win con instead of "everyone graveyard hate Mike lol." We also intentionally sub out and add in more powerful cards to give slight advantages and disadvantages to decks that have been winning more or less recently.
This attitude has defined our playgroup ever since and I think that everyone working together to help everybody have good decks makes our playgroup a really positive experience.

2 - Games dragging out too long - Because of our schedules we only get to meet up as a full group once a week for a few hours. Having that only session entail a single game can really suck considering that if you get bad draws or the strategy you are trying to show off simply didn't happen, well tough luck you don't get another chance for another week.

Solution - This kinda naturally solved itself as we got stronger cards and started to understand how win conditions and combos work ─ games being able to end around turn 6-8 means that we can get in 2-3 games a night if we don't dawdle... which brings me to the other half of the solution of reminding everyone not to dawdle. Put on music instead of a TV show that is going to distract people. Remind people who aren't paying attention or who are on their phones to pay attention to the game. When people aren't paying attention things drag out waaayyyy too much and everyone's decision making gets way too sloppy. That just makes for un-fun games that don't feel interesting or competitive, so you have to try to minimize it as much as possible.

3 - Culture shock when playing with strangers - For a few months we didn't play with anybody outside of our playgroup. When we did, a few issues quickly became apparent. Up until that point, our attitude of "help make sure everybody is enabled to be powerful" had simply worked. When it came to things like the stack, politics, and threat assessment, our veteran player had always been completely transparent with us and we also would give each other honest opinions mid-game on what was probably the best for others. We'd also allow for take-backs if someone didn't fully understand what they were doing when they first tapped the wrong land or said the thing or whatever. Like I said above, we don't get to play that many games so we want to make sure that the ones we do play enable everyone to be as powerful as possible. Playing with strangers was a bit of a culture shock because those values weren't held in two primary ways:

First, we found that many experienced magic players, despite knowing that we were all pretty new, didn't feel the need to explain things or be up-front with how powerful cards were that we'd never even seen before. We were all used to having a mutual understanding of what the win conditions were and therefore an idea of how to play around them, but when strangers started being devious with politics, trying to keep a poker face when they played a combo piece so that these newbies think it's nothing and don't try to remove it, or tried to talk through something quickly and draw as little attention as possible to a way the stack worked so that "oh sorry, it's too late for you to respond" could win them the game, we definitely had some feel bads. I just feels like; what's the glory in taking advantage of a new player's inexperience so that you can sneak in a win that should have been easily removed or countered? Those kinds of wake-up calls in the real world just felt bad but now we all know that no one is obligated to be honest with us and we should take the time to read every card carefully and use our right to take a moment to decide if we are going to respond to things.

Second, it turned out that this whole time we were actually playing pretty high power strategies... in principle. Even though we don't have the budget or staples (or experience) to be considered anything close to cedh, we all want to on one hand ramp / draw / tutor into the ability to win as quickly as possible (that or the slower decks want to slow the fast decks down), while on the other hand influence the state of the game and dance back and forth with what other players are doing enough to be able to actually go for that win. This has been super fun for us and and is interesting because of all the interaction and counter-play and politics and super silly stack interactions that make Magic just really cool to me. That's just how we knew how to play the game and what we thought Magic was. Well we found out the hard way that if you go to an LGS and interact with other people or combo win on the spot, there are a lot of people there who don't like it. I've had really socially awkward experiences with someone getting really salty about me going infinite or with someone scooping because I countered something that seemed scary. Some people just sit down with a deck really wanting to do something, and if other players stop them from being able to do that then they simply can't have fun. "Sorry dude... I didn't know."

Solution(?): So far, playing among ourselves has continued to be more fun and I haven't attempted returning to my LGS for a while, but I think that we've definitely learned our lessons of how to play this game with strangers. I'd never thought of bringing decks of different power levels to my LGS to account for the differences in expectations and power levels... it's just natural to assume that Magic is just always the same game. That combined with recent happenings has gotten us to think a lot about the social contract, communicating with strangers to make sure we're all on the same power level, and being able to read the room properly. I'll be honest, I seriously am not experienced enough with getting power level and expectations down enough to say that I have solved these issues playing with strangers, but at least now we understand *what* the problem is moving forward.

I personally don't find it fun to have us all just sit there in isolation building a build board state without earning it until some unspoken agreement to attack is made. I also have no problems at all with stax or a lockout situation. A slow win condition is still a win condition and what lost the game was the decisions leading up to the lock, not the lock itself (those actions leading up to it are the fun of the game anyway, not the combo itself). When someone's win condition hits the board, and can't be stopped, they won. Just scoop and let's give everyone another chance at having their decks work instead of being salty and making it take longer. I dunno... maybe we're all just so accustomed to helping each other that having to sit out for a few turns doesn't feel bad since we're giving advice, enjoy seeing each other do well, and are excited about the outcome anyway. Maybe it's just not painful since when it happens the game's about to end anyway and we don't prolong it? Something to think about I guess.

So when two worlds collide like this, who has to sacrifice their fun? I don't know, but I suppose that bringing multiple kinds of decks with me next time I play with strangers is the beginning of the answer. If my deck is limited enough to the point where my decision making being unlimited is fair and fun, I'm fine with that. We'll see if I can achieve it.

4 - Money - This isn't exactly a problem as much as it's a challenge that we know is coming up over the horizon that we'll need to overcome. As we improve our decks more and more we are approaching the point where the logical upgrades to our decks are going to be things like fetches, duals, fast mana rocks and other top tier building blocks of a mana base... aka thousands of dollars. This simply can't happen. Not all of us have jobs that can budget that kind of stuff, and we don't have any interest of putting half the group in a situation where they aren't competitive. We've been discussing the possibilities of proxying but it comes with many questions. Will this isolate us from other players who don't like proxying? Where will we draw the line between what is and isn't okay to proxy? Will we maintain two separate metas; one proxy and one organic? Will we just proxy cost-prohibitive mana bases since basically anything is possible after that? We don't know yet. All we know is that eventually we won't be able to play "real magic" without "fake cards" and that just... feels wrong. We wish that there was a reasonable way to just buy the cards we want but that is impossible.

===================

Now that I've written this down don't know how much this really stands out as being different from the jist of what's been said so far in this thread ─ mismatches of power level, what people find to be fun, or expectations of how Magic is supposed to be played tend to cause the feel bads. Maybe my ramblings weren't very helpful for you then... but hopefully they were.

I personally love my playgroup's way of playing Magic ─ we let the mechanics of Magic itself dictate what is and isn't a legal way to play, but we deckbuild and communicate in ways that help insure that our decks are balanced and fun for everyone over time as we improve as a group. I think that's great! Playing with strangers on the other hand can be a challenge but I think we'll get better at that too.

Sheldon, if you don't mind, I'd like to end this post by highlighting part of my experience in gaming that I feel relates to recent happenings in EDH:

I used to be a competitive Halo player, but Bungie showed a clear disdain for competitive players and started designing their sequels in ways that didn't appeal to us. I eventually left the series because it strayed too far from what I loved about my favorite game. It took years of searching through other genres of games until I stumbled upon Splatoon, which I now play competitively, travel the country to play and commentate in tournaments, and do all sorts of things with the community that I love. Magic isn't my main game, Splatoon is, but I see in a lot of cEDH players signs of how my journey in Halo once made me feel.

At this point, EDH is basically big enough to be its own game. That is a huge responsibility for you. Perhaps it is okay for me to remind you that it brings with it players under your wing who don't love your game for the same reasons you do. I've seen many sub-communities have to deal with a developer turning on them, so I think it's worth saying the following:

The feel bads from individual games gone wrong don't in any way compare to the feel bads from the developers of the game you love turning against you and taking it away from you.

I hope that can come off as being a heartfelt gesture that represents competitive gamers out there under your wing or otherwise, as opposed to some kind of criticism or implication towards you or the RC. I just understand the feelings involved and the feelings that aren't involved but people fear could be. I think that the first and most important step towards avoiding that kind of feel bad is through open and respectful communication- and hey look at that! It's exactly what you're doing right now.

Welp, this was all written on a whim so I hope that it's coherent enough and useful for you. Thanks for extending the invitation to communicate with Commander players and cheers!

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Post by DrSeaMonster » 4 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
I've played well over 10,000 commander games, so I'm my own inbuilt statistics, and at this stage in my life I know all the patterns and it's just not worth my time anymore with near forgone conclusions.
10,000 games of EDH is an average of 14 games a week, every week, since the format was created in 2004.

That's a high number.
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Post by Hermes_ » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Maybe it's just time we suck it up and put sol ring in the command zone where it belongs ;) THAT IS A JOKE SHELDON!
and because it's a 1 cost,we say sol ring tax is +3 lol STILL JOKING!
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

DrSeaMonster wrote:
4 years ago
darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
I've played well over 10,000 commander games, so I'm my own inbuilt statistics, and at this stage in my life I know all the patterns and it's just not worth my time anymore with near forgone conclusions.
10,000 games of EDH is an average of 14 games a week, every week, since the format was created in 2004.

That's a high number.
About 8 games a day for about 250 days of the year, since 2013 on Magic Online. That's around 12,000. It's a guesstimate but will be pretty close.
My FNM playing paper is around 5 games for about 40 weeks of the year, for 6 years, so only like 1200, Still that's like 13,200 commander games.

The "What makes bad games" when you have so many games under your belt creep to the top and there are plenty of things, like different tiered decks being played at the table is an obvious one, but it's hard to do anything about that, so one thing that the RC can do is create less unbalanced starts with Sol Ring and Mana Crypt being completely overpowered and dominating so many games. It's a tangible way to create better games statistically.

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Post by Crimson » 4 years ago

When someone isn't playing because he/she can't draw into lands.

Creature-based strategies should have backup plans to deal with multiple wraths.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

After a quick peruse, I'm absolutely certain that the format is in the right hands of Sheldon and the RC.

First, they created the format and everyone/anyone else is free to build their own format from scratch or just use house-rules. Second, under other leadership, y'all would have banned every card by now.

I personally don't play Strionic Resonator in my Brago deck but the fact that someone else can makes this format great.

Yesterday, playing a mono-white Sram voltron deck, I played 2 games. I won the 4-man game where one opponent T1 Mana Crypt into Wood Elves and he was the only person who accelerated. I also won the 3-man game where the opponent T5 Zurgo'd into T6 Jokulhaups. All with a well built Sram auras (non-cheerios) deck.

I'm totally convinced that banning cards is the wrong way to go.

From my play experience, I mostly don't enjoy.
1.) Slow-play
2.) Poor threat assessment, to the point where a 4-man pod feels like 2v1v1 or even 3v1.
3.) Complaining
4.) Politics in the form of whining/begging
darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
The "What makes bad games" when you have so many games under your belt creep to the top and there are plenty of things, like different tiered decks being played at the table is an obvious one, but it's hard to do anything about that, so one thing that the RC can do is create less unbalanced starts with Sol Ring and Mana Crypt being completely overpowered and dominating so many games. It's a tangible way to create better games statistically.
I've seen most of the decks that you build. Banning Sol Ring/Mana Crypt would do little to slow/curtail the snowballs all of your decks are capable of. If people build to break every single card in their 99, it's going to happen regardless of the banned list.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

umtiger wrote:
4 years ago
First, they created the format and everyone/anyone else is free to build their own format from scratch or just use house-rules. Second, under other leadership, y'all would have banned every card by now.
The whole crux is that we are not. I for one are bound by Magic Online, which uses the RC. The other thing is that it's impossible to make "house rules" when people are going to public places for their games.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
The whole crux is that we are not. I for one are bound by Magic Online, which uses the RC. The other thing is that it's impossible to make "house rules" when people are going to public places for their games.
Well, you play mostly (or even exclusively) online... but that's not the case for most EDH players.

Imagine building an entire format from scratch, spending more than a decade cultivating it and sharing it with others. Then because some people on the internet disagree with you, they incessantly insult you and "demand" you step down. It's kinda ridiculous.

If you don't like the rules of NBA basketball, you can watch other leagues or even start your own league. Or be content in not watching NBA games. You don't just demand wholesale changes to league offices and see it happen.

The ban list is not near the top in reasons why game experiences are poor. And I'm concerned that other leadership would have lead to mass bans already. I remember when people actually wanted Crystal Shard banned...

As someone whose posted deck lists only aim to break every new card released, how would any change to ban list change that?

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Post by t0rture_d0ct0r » 4 years ago

As previously mentioned, varying power levels. It is definitely not fun to be locked out of a game to the point where it's draw and pass turn because one guy goes all out when he builds his deck in a playgroup.

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Post by maeos » 4 years ago

When someone whines about you interacting with their boardstate to keep them from comboing off. We recently added people to our 3 year old playgroup and one of the new players plays combo. Whever i start removing his combo pieces, he starts whining that we aren't allowing him to have fun. Its kind of ironic though as his deck has some stax pieces, where we have casually mentioned that those cards restrict others from playing the game but he responded with and i quote "Maybe you should have built your deck to deal with what im playing then". SMH if this keeps up im probably gonna have to start a vote to kick him from our group.

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Post by Styrofoam » 4 years ago

1) Jerks at the table
2) Games where any single player is unable to do anything at all.
3) disproportional power levels.

That's about it.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

maeos wrote:
4 years ago
When someone whines about you interacting with their boardstate to keep them from comboing off. We recently added people to our 3 year old playgroup and one of the new players plays combo. Whever i start removing his combo pieces, he starts whining that we aren't allowing him to have fun. Its kind of ironic though as his deck has some stax pieces, where we have casually mentioned that those cards restrict others from playing the game but he responded with and i quote "Maybe you should have built your deck to deal with what im playing then". SMH if this keeps up im probably gonna have to start a vote to kick him from our group.
Is he aware of the cognitive dissonance required to complain about removal of his pieces and still make that sort of statement?
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Post by Nimbaway » 4 years ago

Like enough others have mentioned, mismatched power level is definitely going to make for some bad games, especially if they drag on.

And from a casual perspective I'd also reason that a game where one or more players aren't able to make an impactful play is somewhat bad as well. Nothing worse than having played a game and feeling like you didn't contribute a single thing.

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Post by hyalopterouslemur » 4 years ago

I have a weird relationship with MLD. Mostly I don't mind it, but playing it when you're losing so you get the last laugh, yeah, don't do that.
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Post by Airi » 4 years ago

I have two things that to me, make for bad games:

Slow games. This includes slow play, excessive stax and/or chaos, and things like MLD where the caster cannot quickly win after casting it and people have to (possibly more than once) rebuild from scratch. I usually only have a limited few hours to play in a given week due to how far away from my LGS I live, so I'd like to get more than one or two games in. It's not really the fault of the player who uses those kinds of things, but if I know they exist in a deck, I'm going to do my damnedest to nuke that deck from orbit early.

People who don't try to win. It's a funny line for me, because on the one hand, I don't mind when people aren't digging up their combos ASAP, but if you have a win in your hand, I'd rather you just use it (provided you're not waiting on protection). We have some people in my group, my dearest boyfriend included, who will actively not cast wins when they have them early because they don't want to "invalidate the game", but to me it feels way worse when I find out that the game should have ended and didn't. Especially if I happened to win, it kind of just puts a sour taste in my mouth. This goes to a lesser degree to handing out resources to people behind, rather than doing things like targeting yourself with that extra turn spell. Deeply personal to me, but it does make the game feel very pointless.

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Post by vandertroll » 4 years ago

People who play slow. I don't mean slow decks or long combo turns, but people who seem to be absent minded and/or checking their phones when they are about to play, They usually take so much time looking over their cards and then they do nothing.
People who put their permanents in a messy way on the table, like putting mana rocks with the lands because they are all producing mana. Stacking creatures of the same type etc.

People who give up once they get countered or have a permanent removed. They usually tend to focus in one person or don't do anything meaningful at all.
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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

hyalopterouslemur wrote:
4 years ago
I have a weird relationship with MLD. Mostly I don't mind it, but playing it when you're losing so you get the last laugh, yeah, don't do that.
Very true. Spiteful moves are just lame. Like scooping to deny a trigger or just scooping to removal are just disappointing and pretty immature. It's a game - be a good sport and don't get spiteful.
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Post by maeos » 4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Is he aware of the cognitive dissonance required to complain about removal of his pieces and still make that sort of statement?
I honestly don't know. I guess you could call him a man child cause he pouts and complains when he loses where most of our playgroup take it in stride. Most of the group has let him do his thing then just one shot him when he his board state gets problematic.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

maeos wrote:
4 years ago
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Is he aware of the cognitive dissonance required to complain about removal of his pieces and still make that sort of statement?
I honestly don't know. I guess you could call him a man child cause he pouts and complains when he loses where most of our playgroup take it in stride. Most of the group has let him do his thing then just one shot him when he his board state gets problematic.
Bit ridiculous but whatever, I guess. I had someone scoop when I cast Cleansing Nova yesterday which had me pretty stunned. It takes all sorts I guess.
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Post by gilrad » 4 years ago

I'd say the vast majority of my bad experiences come from pick-up groups. Everyone agrees they're not playing cEDH, the game goes for a while, people have fun, then someone in the pod says something like "the game has to end sometime", and combos off. Or "I have to do something about your winning board state" and uses Kamahl, Fist of Krosa + removal on all my lands.

It's gotten to the point where I've been avoiding my local shop.

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Post by Artaud » 4 years ago

I have nothing against combo, stax or whatever but what ruins games for me is just playing bad. There are some people that seat at the table with us and make bad plays, have bad threat assessment and on top of that - take their turns painfully long just to pass them without an action to change gamestate in any way. This infuriates me so much that I leave a table with a feeling of wasted time.

I also do not like games ending too fast but I'm not against cEDH - it's fine when people enjoy it. I just adapt and focus on combo-player to prevent him from winning, even at the cost of myself loosing. I hate though when other people use this opportunity to gain an upper hand while not doing anything to support my proper threat assessment.

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