State of Design 2016
General forum
Posted on Aug. 29, 2016, 5:45 p.m. by GoldGhost012
Head Designer Mark Rosewater talks about the lessons the last year of Magic (Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad blocks) has taught him and R&D Design.
A third visit to Zendikar sounds nice. Adventure time, people! Now with 500% less Eldrazi!
August 29, 2016 6:11 p.m.
AgentGreen says... #4
It's refreshing to know that MR acknowledge that overall; BFZ was largely a bust and that the team will learn from that
August 29, 2016 7:56 p.m.
iBleedPunk says... #5
At least he is honest in saying they should have waited to resolve the Eldrazi arc
August 29, 2016 9:26 p.m.
Yes. He realizes the huge problem with the two set per block design. We're getting too many mechanics, too quickly and most importantly, each one is very poorly explored.
Investigate is a very interesting mechanic. We saw about 20 cards worth of it and nothing that was very interesting and powerful. Escalate could have been huge but we saw about 5 cards with it on. Again - a wasted opportunity. Colorless matters - too shallow in use. Again a wasted opportunity.
I feel like from a game perspective what we're getting now is the very shortened whistle stop tour of everything. It's shallow. It's easy. It's dull. The lack of continuity isn't just a story telling issue, it's a gameppay issue. We get all the broad brush strokes of mechanics - the obvious and essential implementations of investigate for example. But none of the weirder implementations are seen, the kind of stuff it takes a set or two to build up to simply because we're not given multiple sets of a mechanic to play with.
PartyJ says... #2
"There were too many Eldrazi" ... tell me something new ;-)
Glad he marked it on his whiteboard; let them go away for a loong time.
August 29, 2016 6:08 p.m.