Define user friendly, I have no problem navigating or posting here.

also there's this comment that sheldon made in another thread

even a former mod of salvation pointed out that the moderation on reddit is more lax than here or salvation. Now yes,the forum here does seem to be a bit retro by accident no argument there.

EDIT: as of now with 51 responses 58.8% has never visited this site.

@trappedslider

Maybe its something you can get used to, but have you tried posting on mobile? It's not good.

The thing about reddit is you can't complain about the mods. Anyone can make a subreddit with their own mods and cultivate their own community.

Look, at the end of the day, the question Sheldon posed was "What can they do to make us feel like they listened even when they decide something that we disagree with?". Where they post is a component of that, but its not the main part.

To me, the main part lies with reasoning. Now, many posters before me have said that they find the reasons given by the RC to be vague, unconvincing, and inconsistent in application. So that would be the first thing I'd say they need to fix. They need to figure out how to be consistent and predictable. If they think Paradox Engine causes players to snowball resources and time, and they want to ban it, fine! But then they have to look at all the other cards that snowball resources and time and tell us why those cards were fine so that we know in future what is or is not okay. Tell me why Stasis is fine, or Rhystic Study, or Expropriate, and give reasons why they are different! Help me understand firm criteria.

More than that, understand that uncertainty can be created anywhere. You had an article, "Cards You Should Not Play In Commander", and you explained your feelings on each one. Great, this helps us understand you! Except it doesn't, because almost all those cards are still legal. Do I need to fear that Wound Reflection will make the list eventually? I doubt it. But some of the other cards? Well, I don't know. It feels like the difference between banned and unbanned on that list is arbitrary, that there is no real dividing line at all.

If I can't understand why you take one action and not another, how can I not question your judgement? If it goes against me, how can I not feel ignored?

I'm not saying ban or unban every card to make things neat. I'm saying try set guidelines we can see and understand. I work in a legal field, and one of the things I most love about the law is that it strives for certainty in a fundamentally uncertain world. If a judge rules against my client, it seldom feels like they did so without applying their mind. I can look at precedent, look at the rules, and I can nod and say "That makes sense". I may disagree, still, but I can respect how they came to that conclusion. Take the uncertain philosophy, write it down in certain terms, tell us how you evaluate things, why you make exceptions, why you feel cards are egregious, explain it in concrete terms, and then give it to us.

It doesn't help me to know you like untuned Karador. It helps me to know why Sol Ring is not banned.

The fact that Sheldon thinks this is a card you ought to not play makes me already skeptical of his opinions aligning with mine. Of course I’m biased because I run it, but as someone who has only ever won once with it in my 6 months of playing it, i can tell you it doesn’t create “bad feels” worse than any other cards. It’s a 6 drop do nothing that I can only win off if I manage to play a card that splits life totals in half. The one time I ever even managed that everyone thought it was a cool combo since it had proper setup (and it could have been removed as I was casting fraying omnipotence).
Wound Reflection is no doubt a strong card, but I think Sheldon is pretty alone in thinking it makes “bad feels.”

I'm interpreting his question as "What will it take for me to accept his opinion even when it does not align with mine?" I'm a combo player, I like storm, I like Doomsday, I like going off with crazy Zada turns or improvising a win with a Breya Rube Goldberg machine. The RC and I are never going to have our views align. So what's the next best thing? To me, its them giving me criteria I can look at objectively, test objectively, and go "Yes, things make sense" when they ban or don't ban a card.

I have a feeling that when Sheldon and Co write, they write thinking "If I can just explain my philosophy, if I can just find the right words, the perfect words, if I could share with them properly what I want, then they would understand." It's like they keep pushing out article after article about their philosophy, hoping that this time this latest edition will be the one that gets it right. And its never going to happen. Ever. Because the format that they gave birth to, and the conditions they lived with, are not shared with or understood by the vast majority of players. Sheldon himself noted that combo is becoming more and more common at all levels of play, not just competitive. The game is changing, and the mindset of players is changing with it.

A hundred people can unite around an idea. A hundred thousand need rules. Give us rules.

As a person who loves rules (and gives Magic players rules all the time) I would love it if we could do that, but we can't. The criteria revolve around "cards that are making the kinds of games we want to encourage problematic". There isn't a magic line that can be defined there. Heck, there isn't one for the actual tournament formats, and those are way easier.

I understand that's not what you want, and I wish there was another answer, but if you're looking for a set of hard and fast rules, that's just not possible. A philosophy and making it clear what we're trying to encourage is the best we can do.



I'm very curious how you know this. The format seems to have done very well and is beloved by an awful lot of people, but apparently none of them get it.

Reddit exists to weaponize drama. It's why it exists, and it's why it has been successful. It's structured to magnify emotions and reinforce feedback loops.

It's a terrible place for discussion, for all the same reasons.

You may notice WotC doesn't spend a lot of time there either. I suspect they got there all excited, had a few discussions, then backed away slowly when they saw what it was like.

You may notice that outside Reddit, reactions to the announcement last week are quite different. Sure, there are some people upset, but there's also lots of people very happy with the announcement, and things are generally pretty civilized all around. It's only in Reddit where it becomes a giant frothing mob, and this happens *every* *single* *time*.

I posted in /r/edh last week. I was immediately called "a filthy fucking liar" and downvoted into oblivion. Definitely a good place for a discussion.

At what point does personal responsibility kick in? You choose where to play. When you play there, you choose whom to play with. If you can't get a group of people 4 or more who agree with what should or should not be played, why is it the RCs responsibility to craft that for you?

It's certainly not just you, thats an open question to anyone who says 'I have to follow the RCs list because that's what the people I play with do'.

I play at a local game store with random individuals (I also have a regular group I play with on a different day). I cannot reasonably sit down and negotiate house rules every time I sit down with a random pod in a public venue, particularly when I dont necessarily have the time or cards to make swaps on the spot when people aren't okay with something.

I've already stated that the banlist is effectively meaningless for regular playgroups - Rule 0 is an inherent fact of all kitchen table play. Some of my friends in my regular group have for a time run Un-set cards and the rest of the group was fine with that. They just didnt take those decks to the LGS.

Because if they had, they would have faced a mix of players who were and were not okay with playing with Un-cards, even in moderation. Every time they swap pods, they'd need to ask "is it okay if I play this?" And there would be a number of players who would say "no." These friends eventually took apart these decks for that reason - they couldnt play them at any LGS reliably, so it just wasn't worth trying. Now, Un-cards are already on the banlist and for a reason, but it illustrates the difference where, in a setting with regular players you can reach agreements, this is simply not feasible for public with random unknown players.

The banlist defines the set of cards that can be reasonably expected to be playable without additional negotiation. Thats not a matter of "personal responsibility." It's solely defined by the RC, and that's just the definition of the format for those of us what play at public venues.

I didnt suggest that Rule 0 is a bad thing for the format. I said that the way the RC uses it is a copout. Rule 0, as I said, is automatically in effect for all casual play of any Magic format - if there's no judge, no tournament rules, playgroups do what they want. That flexibility is necessary for casual play and a good thing.

The problem is that the RC uses Rule 0 as a way to deflect criticism. "You don;t like our decision? Well whatever, Rule 0, do what you want." Which would be totally fine if the RC was just a bunch of trusted advisors, but is totally different and not fine when the RC is defining the boundaries for play in public venues where Rule 0 is less useful. I cannot renegotiate house rules with every pod I play with at the LGS. I cannot build decks I plan to play outside of my regular group of friends if I do not know which cards will be reasonably assumed to be legal. That's what teh RC banlist is.

And I'll note the irony that, in a thread about trying to understand why the community does not feel heard by the RC, in a replay to a comment where I explicitly said that this was an example of how the RC communicates in a way that creates that feeling, you ignored the vast majority of the post, and what little you did answer was totally dismissive. This is the problem.

Some pretty broad generalizations here, but after finding the thread you were talking about (its was actually on r/magictcg to be pedantic) I can't blame you for feeling that way. There are bad people everywhere, but the vast majority aren't like the rude and inflammatory ones you ran into in that thread.

I still think a lot of the problem is that large portions of the community feel like they don't factor in for the RC (in some cases because that has been explicitly stated) and reddit as a whole is one of them. This just leads to negativity on all sides.

You could reach a much larger portion of the playerbase if you made a subreddit of your own, and kept people like that out of it. I understand thats not an easy ask. The fact is you would have a much larger audience, have better communication, and get more people on your side.

I wrote a comment clarifying my position in which I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but on reflection I believe that this was incorrect of me. I have left the full message below, in the hopes that you will read it and understand my position better, but I do think it is important to talk about this response.

I wrote about how Commander has changed over time, and how it was unrealistic to expect people to come in with the same views as the RC when it is no longer just a niche casual format played by a small group of people. You responded by saying "Commander is very popular" and "So you're saying no one gets our philosophy?".



This is a thread about what you can do that will make us feel like you listened.

You did not listen to or engage with my point.

I did not say Commander was not popular. I did not say that no one understood the RC's philosophy. Those were not the issues in dispute.

I was saying that most players do not understand the philosophy of the format. I think that is fair to say given that your playerbase now gathers on every continent, exists at every budget level, comprises every player archetype, and exhibits every level of experience with the game. I talked about how combo is growing at every LGS, at every level, which points to shifting views and attitudes about the format. You did not engage with any of this. Instead you chose to misrepresent my words.

What would it take to make me feel heard?

I don't know. But this... This was the opposite of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ORIGINAL RESPONSE:

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here, and say you're not trying set up a straw man of my point. If you are, however, kindly refrain from doing so. I'm making a good-faith attempt to speak to you, I would hope for the same courtesy.

The format has done well. It's beloved by many people. But in six shops over two continents, I have seen each shop have different views on what is casual, what the spirit of the format is, and what is (un)acceptable. My point, which I think you missed, was that it is easy to have a shared vision when your community is small, when you are all pioneers of a niche experience. When EDH started the rules were different, the community was tight-knit, and there were no tournaments for prizes anywhere. Things have changed.

Now you have hundreds of thousands of people who play the game. My LGS has competitive commander as a FNM format. If I go to events there's whole sections for public EDH. It would be shocking to me, quite frankly, if you could get most of your current players to agree on what your philosophy is. As I've said, six stores and two continents and not one store would have been able to agree with another on the philosophy of commander. And that's a problem, when the major explanation you offer for your actions relies on the philosophy of commander.

Quite frankly, if the majority of people understood the philosophy of commander, do you think we would be having this discussion? Do you think if we understood the RC we would feel unheard? Do you think we'd look at the reasons you give for your actions and say they are "vague" and "inconsistent"? No. So clearly a lot of players do not get it.

Absolutely, choosing to play in those places you know the RCs list will be de-facto is a choice, which is what I am driving at. Those places should be free of Sundering Titan, Paradox Engine, and Iona.

If you want to play those things, you absolutely should. But not against people who do play without the benefit of a playgroup, unless you ask.

How is your ideal version of the ban list being used in an LGS not the exact same issue, but in reverse for the people who dislike cards set free by your changes?

Being succinct, especially when repeating information brought up multiple times, isnt dismissive.

Rule 0 is definitely more of a symbolic gesture than an actual rule. WotC didn't need a rule to say, "If you're playing Magic with your friends, you can play with any cards you want", since it's obviously the case, and I've seen 4 Sol Ring casual decks piloted by frayed-edged, weathered, unsleeved card casuals. It's all in good fun, and they didn't need a rule to tell them it's okay. The thing about Rule 0 is, it only works when it's not needed. Pretend Rule 0 didn't exist and four Commander players got together and decided to run Un cards. There would be no consequences.

But I am addressing your issue. You made a statement about the vast majority of Magic players with nothing to back it up other than "I've been to a few shops". I'm genuinely trying to understand how you can extrapolate from that when the vast, vast majority (there's plenty of debate about exactly how much, but likely over 95%) is not played in shops. As you say, there are hundreds of thousands of players playing. Extrapolating from one audience is going to give you a very strange picture of the format.

This is at the core of the problem. Commander is not a good format for shops and certainly not a good format for tournaments, and we've said this all along. We can't stop stores from trying to make a quick buck, but it's on them to make it a good experience. It represents a very small portion of the Commander audience.



Honest question: do you think we're having this discussion with the majority of Commander players?

I understand your position. I work with competitively-minded people all the time. You will be hard-pressed to find a bigger proponent of competitive play. But there is room for other types of play in the wider sphere of Magic and that's why we created Commander. We understand that there are some people who don't get our vision, who find it vague and inconsistent. They're not wrong (from their perspective). And we listen to everyone. But the goalposts for "being heard" here are basically "you need to change the philosophy of your format because the top 1% are telling you to."

I'm curious if you understand why Commander is valuable to Wizards, and why they embraced it so wholeheartedly? It's not because it gave them another tournament format; they have plenty of those. It's not so they could reach engaged players in shops; they do that no problem. Commander managed to reach a huge audience they had historically struggled to connect with because Commander resonated with that group. That's insanely valuable to them. We've collectively spent many thousands of hours working to understand them (along with the many thousands of hours working to understand the more engaged mindset). They actually do want something very different, and that's why it's so difficult to have this discussion.

I'd encourage you to read https://adjameson.wordpress.com/2018/12 ... -at-large/ - it's not really about Commander, but it's an important and underrated article that touches on a lot of the same themes. We don't want to be all things to all people. We'd rather be the awesomest format for a set of people while understanding that it doesn't mean the format's for everyone. The best we can do is make it clear up front what you're getting into and give you the power to shape it. If a store chooses to make no effort to shape it and the players aren't enjoying themselves, I seriously doubt we could do anything around the edges that would make things better. It requires a different format.