Former Magic designer Bill Stark's thoughts on Standard's problems [2022]
Former Magic designer Bill Stark's thoughts on Standard's problems [2022]
Aaron Forsythe asked a great question on Twitter recently: why has Standard play fallen off? There was a great conversation that followed (check out this fantastic data breakdown of responses from Magic Data Science). Here are my thoughts as someone who has worked on these types of problems and watc...
TL;DR:
Standard has gotten less fun as players [via Arena] create solved formats at a breakneck pace unseen before in Magic history. Combine that with a shuttering of play due to a pandemic that led to players finding non-rotating formats they could invest in due to uncertainty for when Magic play would return and you get all-time lows in Standard play.
@andrew Why play paper Standard at a shop when you can play Arena Standard in your pajamas? That's the question in need of an answer.
Without a doubt, there are many factors contributing to this. Some of the major ones in my mind are price (arena is cheaper than physical play, especially for rotating formats, combined with general increased cost to play making rotating formats much less appealing), and availability (arena is more convenient, especially for older players, and not many standard events in stores anymore).
Standard was also the defaco competitive format for spikes. With no major competitions that are accessible to the general player, even those players moved on.
I don't play Standard, or constructed, so this could be a dumb idea, but how would players feel about shifting what "Standard" means?
Right now, you immediately have access 10 sets worth of cards. The obvious argument to having that many sets is to present lots of different options to keep the format feeling fresh and changing. But of course, the new problem is that it doesn't feel fresh anyway, so the value of having all those cards available is diminished.
What if instead, after launch week, you slowly introduced the 9 other sets (or more) of the format on a weekly basis? As in, for launch week only the launch set (let's call it Set A) is available to play, then week 2 adds the next most recent set, so A + B. Week 3 is ABC, and so on. So, every week you get a sort of developing meta that's subtly different from any other period of play. Older sets are more naturally phased out, newer sets have renewed emphasis, the format has a chance to build and evolve over time, weaker niche cards could have their chance to shine. I don't know.
@bogdugg @andrew to me, that sounds like too much work. I dont want to have to look up the changes each week and feel obligated to try to build a new deck with the new set. Most likely, I'd skip playing Standard for 2 months until I was allowed to play with all the cards. It's an interesting idea for a store with a lot of established regulars trying to shake things up, but would probably drive everyone else away.