The number of expansions in standard needs to be brought back down to 5-8 expansions. Card production needs to be slowed down.
Standard was better in the past when there was only 5-8 expansions. It was also better when there were blocks so that half of the format fit some theme and had some mechanical synergy rather than just having the production going any direction with either a mix of powercrept creature cards for modern and everything else being intentionally designed for commander/draft. The commander ones of course being absurdly overpowered but a high enough mana cost that they can't break standard unless someone decides to just throw zombify, discard, and reanimate on turn 3-4 and win the game then and there with the overpowered card intended for commander.
MTG expansion were also better before Commander was being officially supported since cards were not intentionally designed for it. But that's another issue.
The rate at which expansions are released is also insane. There is NO WAY that anything is being properly playtested with these short production cycles. And hence everything is either useless in competitive non-commander formats, or overpowered to the point where its gamebreaking, i.e. cori-steel cutter and hearthfire hero, if it's not just disproportionally overpowered relative to its mana cost.
Slow down the expansions and reduce the size of standard back to a two year rotation. We want to play standard, not neo-extended being passed off as standard. Extended of course being a format that was dropped because of how unpopular it was.
PressureChamber#23947
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bonsai#70698
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I completely agree. Given all the possible interaction mechanics, WotC is making its, ostensibly, primary job of making a fun and interactive game insanely hard. And I'm only talking about Standard, let alone the other formats with larger cardbases and even more interaction possibilities.
Despite obvious mega-aggro & mega-ramp issues related to the recent unusually high number of bans, my sympathies go out to design team for trying to do the impossible. There are currently no less than 16 sets in Standard! After the Fall rotation, there will still be 12! That's just insane!
Given its value-squeezing directives from parent company Hasbro, WotC's primary motivation atm seems to be licensing 3rd party IP to enable mass card production for, in theory, increased revenue from the same capital base.
It's certainly not about publishing stable Arena software, balancing Standard, or any other format.
Historically, at least *one* format was considered in "reasonably good shape". Atm, none of them are.