Re: [Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread
Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:26 am
Disclaimer: These are all personal opinions formed after over years of observation. Some may have observed things I missed out and vice versa and that's before it goes through my opinion bias translator.
Something about the entirely of MTG has shifted and the same factors that affected MTG itself are affecting Nexus (be it via the game itself or not). The major one is the entire change in demographic of "gamers", something I already took note during the announcement and pre-beta era of MTG Arena. We never got the direct verbal/written confirmation but the measures to "change" MTG to appeal to the next generation of gamers who were brought up mostly by technology were pretty obvious with Arena and how it affected MTG design. A decade ago you tried pitching the idea of Modal DFCs and MaRo might have just thrown in out the window. A lot of "complicated" measures of the past were relaxed because Arena "enabled" it. Just from Ikoria, companions and Mutate might have been similarly thrown out the window, but Arena automating a lot of the process made them look more attractive they're willing to say "Oh well, guess paper players just gotta memorize more" instead of "No, we can't do this, it will shun new players" a decade ago. In fact if they don't do this, MTGA would seem less attractive to the other OCGs out there.
I remembered the doomsaying when Arena debuted, "everyone" claiming WotC will abandon paper (and the fierce counterarguments), but typical behavioral reward from the internet looks towards the extremes, but if muted it down, it does alter the landscape of the game to a degree. Paper will "suffer" (not die as the extremes will have you believe), because WotC now has to appeal to two demographics and notably the Arena demographic is the one easier to attract new players with because it employs technologies current and upcoming generations of new players are used to, while paper players generally will "dwindle" in new numbers (yes we're the "boomers" now) because there are less "kids" brought into gaming the same way the paper players were (and while sunk cost fallacy doesn't really hit as hard as we have a Secondary market, it still exists as a hook of retainment by itself).
So that's a lot of observation/"speculative history" from my side concerning the game, but what does it got to do with Primers (or Nexus as a whole)? Especially when you can't even EDH in Arena? It's not so much Arena itself (I was using Arena as an easy way to separate the newer generation), but this newer generation is also entering the paper game (and EDH by extension), or to be more accurate pretty much most new player entering the paper game/format still retains the same type of grew-up-gaming-culture as those who play Arena (exclusively). There's barely any actually new players whose grew up with only the experience as those who joined the game in 90s or early 00s and if you extract out those who adapted to the "newer" gaming culture because they play other games as well, there's even less.
Darn it, I'm still beating around the bush, the main point is the newer generations (inclusive of those of the older generation that adapted) aren't used to forum formats. It's not their default method of taking information. I'm not saying any side is bad (in fact we can go in a detailed explanation of the flaws of every type of presentation, but I'm not doing that here, being ranty enough already), but crudely put, just the fact "times have changed, old folks".
Let me take a step back and compile everything into a larger picture we try to see. Think about it, in recent years there has been an explosion of new cards and new Commanders, we clearly can't catch up with all of them. There was a time where there was only a few Commanders with no decklists thread (and someone would fill it in), then we over-saturated to the point it became common where sets have half their Legendaries with no talk on completely. Even in EDH toolbox websites where you only dump decklists it saturated to a point some only have a couple of lists as a formality.
Likewise the cardpool swelled up and the market fluctuates in hundred different more points than it did a decade ago because there are so many cards. For a primer to keep track of everything for a budget/expensive variant is asking a singular person to keep track of that market like a EDH toolbox website, it's just not feasible. I know it's not a mandatory requirement here, but my actual point is that with hundreds of different price points of alternatives to keep track of, it just means at any given time a deck/primer can be considered too costly to some people or "too cheap" (in the sense stars aligned and the better alternative dropped so much in price the guide looks like it was just "bad" guide for recommending the "worse" version of a deck). This problem only gets worse as the game gets larger since we encompass pretty much the whole cardpool.
In terms of cardpool, that's why a lot of modern mediums just simply cut back to "remember to include ramp, draw, removal, synergy" with a few recommendations from mostly accessible cards from the point of publishing. Those mediums will looks equally outdated another decade down the road, we're way past the point of being able to analyze every single card for every single archetype. With WotC pursuing the format as hard as they are with "Flavor of the Month" Commanders, even entire decks/archetypes are subject to this.
Another notable thing about modern mediums is that a lot of them are also jobs/career-streamlined. Sure, even in the old days writing for games in forums for free could lead you into a publication route, but modern-day already took the initiative to just monetize the medium, so the writing becomes the job instead of being application experience for one. Sure, it has a failure rate as well, but the point is it's still a route made possible because the newer generation enabled it to be so.
Okay great, now I feel like I swerved off-topic minorly in several directions while making myself sound like an ungrateful person. For the record I fully appreciate the time and effort you folks put into trying to maintain the website (which I admittedly do not even have the time to visit myself, when I'm busy I don't even care about the entirely of MTG even my own decks, so...), but I'm just giving out my opinions on what I've seen the "fansite meta" for hobbies of all kinds (not just MTG) evolve over the years and to put it in a crude manner that I must, the "fansite with a forum supported by people donating their time as much as they can" formula isn't exactly doing so hot in an era where people are utilizing all the fundraising tools, equipment and top social media sites on top of their time they can to potentially make it their career.
It's a bit uncomfortable to hypocritically point out/suggest that to revitalize the place there must be someone to put in the effort in the direction the newer generation of media has already flocked to while not being that person (or even worse, someone who barely shows up here nowadays and is part of the natural decay of traffic), but I just had to say it. As said, I'm not ungrateful for the effort put in, but the reality does show it is an outdated direction with diminishing returns of effort as time passes.
I'm not saying I expect Nexus to drop their lives just to go down this route, I'm crudely pointing out there's an entire industry of people doing way more than that and competition is so tight over there that we shouldn't feel so bad that we're doing abysmally (I get more Nexus of Fate results from MTG Nexus in Youtube, so I think we can concisely conclude we're doing worse than a singular powerful card over there). Yes, we're also doing worse than MTGS in their heyday, but the heyday era of our type of knowledge medium is also over already, so there's no actual real comparison.
Part of me wanted to just not post this upon typo review because even I felt so bad for expressing my honest, rather negative opinion, but I also feel like I must let it out and I really like the mature atmosphere of this place that can take it (if I tried this tone on any topic on Reddit I would be Nexus'ed to another Fate), which explains why I do revisit here on the occasions I do.
Great now I just made another grandfather forum post, some habits just don't die do they.
Something about the entirely of MTG has shifted and the same factors that affected MTG itself are affecting Nexus (be it via the game itself or not). The major one is the entire change in demographic of "gamers", something I already took note during the announcement and pre-beta era of MTG Arena. We never got the direct verbal/written confirmation but the measures to "change" MTG to appeal to the next generation of gamers who were brought up mostly by technology were pretty obvious with Arena and how it affected MTG design. A decade ago you tried pitching the idea of Modal DFCs and MaRo might have just thrown in out the window. A lot of "complicated" measures of the past were relaxed because Arena "enabled" it. Just from Ikoria, companions and Mutate might have been similarly thrown out the window, but Arena automating a lot of the process made them look more attractive they're willing to say "Oh well, guess paper players just gotta memorize more" instead of "No, we can't do this, it will shun new players" a decade ago. In fact if they don't do this, MTGA would seem less attractive to the other OCGs out there.
I remembered the doomsaying when Arena debuted, "everyone" claiming WotC will abandon paper (and the fierce counterarguments), but typical behavioral reward from the internet looks towards the extremes, but if muted it down, it does alter the landscape of the game to a degree. Paper will "suffer" (not die as the extremes will have you believe), because WotC now has to appeal to two demographics and notably the Arena demographic is the one easier to attract new players with because it employs technologies current and upcoming generations of new players are used to, while paper players generally will "dwindle" in new numbers (yes we're the "boomers" now) because there are less "kids" brought into gaming the same way the paper players were (and while sunk cost fallacy doesn't really hit as hard as we have a Secondary market, it still exists as a hook of retainment by itself).
So that's a lot of observation/"speculative history" from my side concerning the game, but what does it got to do with Primers (or Nexus as a whole)? Especially when you can't even EDH in Arena? It's not so much Arena itself (I was using Arena as an easy way to separate the newer generation), but this newer generation is also entering the paper game (and EDH by extension), or to be more accurate pretty much most new player entering the paper game/format still retains the same type of grew-up-gaming-culture as those who play Arena (exclusively). There's barely any actually new players whose grew up with only the experience as those who joined the game in 90s or early 00s and if you extract out those who adapted to the "newer" gaming culture because they play other games as well, there's even less.
Darn it, I'm still beating around the bush, the main point is the newer generations (inclusive of those of the older generation that adapted) aren't used to forum formats. It's not their default method of taking information. I'm not saying any side is bad (in fact we can go in a detailed explanation of the flaws of every type of presentation, but I'm not doing that here, being ranty enough already), but crudely put, just the fact "times have changed, old folks".
Let me take a step back and compile everything into a larger picture we try to see. Think about it, in recent years there has been an explosion of new cards and new Commanders, we clearly can't catch up with all of them. There was a time where there was only a few Commanders with no decklists thread (and someone would fill it in), then we over-saturated to the point it became common where sets have half their Legendaries with no talk on completely. Even in EDH toolbox websites where you only dump decklists it saturated to a point some only have a couple of lists as a formality.
Likewise the cardpool swelled up and the market fluctuates in hundred different more points than it did a decade ago because there are so many cards. For a primer to keep track of everything for a budget/expensive variant is asking a singular person to keep track of that market like a EDH toolbox website, it's just not feasible. I know it's not a mandatory requirement here, but my actual point is that with hundreds of different price points of alternatives to keep track of, it just means at any given time a deck/primer can be considered too costly to some people or "too cheap" (in the sense stars aligned and the better alternative dropped so much in price the guide looks like it was just "bad" guide for recommending the "worse" version of a deck). This problem only gets worse as the game gets larger since we encompass pretty much the whole cardpool.
In terms of cardpool, that's why a lot of modern mediums just simply cut back to "remember to include ramp, draw, removal, synergy" with a few recommendations from mostly accessible cards from the point of publishing. Those mediums will looks equally outdated another decade down the road, we're way past the point of being able to analyze every single card for every single archetype. With WotC pursuing the format as hard as they are with "Flavor of the Month" Commanders, even entire decks/archetypes are subject to this.
Another notable thing about modern mediums is that a lot of them are also jobs/career-streamlined. Sure, even in the old days writing for games in forums for free could lead you into a publication route, but modern-day already took the initiative to just monetize the medium, so the writing becomes the job instead of being application experience for one. Sure, it has a failure rate as well, but the point is it's still a route made possible because the newer generation enabled it to be so.
Okay great, now I feel like I swerved off-topic minorly in several directions while making myself sound like an ungrateful person. For the record I fully appreciate the time and effort you folks put into trying to maintain the website (which I admittedly do not even have the time to visit myself, when I'm busy I don't even care about the entirely of MTG even my own decks, so...), but I'm just giving out my opinions on what I've seen the "fansite meta" for hobbies of all kinds (not just MTG) evolve over the years and to put it in a crude manner that I must, the "fansite with a forum supported by people donating their time as much as they can" formula isn't exactly doing so hot in an era where people are utilizing all the fundraising tools, equipment and top social media sites on top of their time they can to potentially make it their career.
It's a bit uncomfortable to hypocritically point out/suggest that to revitalize the place there must be someone to put in the effort in the direction the newer generation of media has already flocked to while not being that person (or even worse, someone who barely shows up here nowadays and is part of the natural decay of traffic), but I just had to say it. As said, I'm not ungrateful for the effort put in, but the reality does show it is an outdated direction with diminishing returns of effort as time passes.
I'm not saying I expect Nexus to drop their lives just to go down this route, I'm crudely pointing out there's an entire industry of people doing way more than that and competition is so tight over there that we shouldn't feel so bad that we're doing abysmally (I get more Nexus of Fate results from MTG Nexus in Youtube, so I think we can concisely conclude we're doing worse than a singular powerful card over there). Yes, we're also doing worse than MTGS in their heyday, but the heyday era of our type of knowledge medium is also over already, so there's no actual real comparison.
Part of me wanted to just not post this upon typo review because even I felt so bad for expressing my honest, rather negative opinion, but I also feel like I must let it out and I really like the mature atmosphere of this place that can take it (if I tried this tone on any topic on Reddit I would be Nexus'ed to another Fate), which explains why I do revisit here on the occasions I do.
Great now I just made another grandfather forum post, some habits just don't die do they.