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kalel posted:you could reasonably blame that on the impact of the war in Ukraine. but I've always maintained that in this current era of growth for MTG, as soon as Hasbro's profit margins decelerate two quarters in a row, the board is going to panic and actively push the design team to accelerate power creep. if they miss their target in Q2, then assuming sets are designed a year out at this point, I would expect to see an eldraine-level jump in power level of standard around Q2 or Q3 2023, or alternately, the release of an extremely power-crept and ip-branded mh3 This is the second quarter of missed earnings. They missed their EBITDA target in Q4 of last year by 22%. Though that was a bit of shifting their Arena costs all year to that quarter to make the earnings look better the rest of the year. Q2 is going to tank a bit too, last year it was propped by MH2, this year the supplemental product is CL2. CL was a solid seller but not MH2 levels. I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking for ways to spice up DM2, maybe a 'I love my store store' buyva box promo card promo that releases the same weekend.
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Apr 19, 2022 14:13
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Perhaps max greed in arena , being super lazy about paper/online integration, and pinny pinching their paper play for a decade is catching up to them?
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Apr 19, 2022 14:20
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Sickening posted:Perhaps max greed in arena , being super lazy about paper/online integration, and pinny pinching their paper play for a decade is catching up to them? https://twitter.com/HipstersMTG/status/1516396622854463498 and the rest of that tweet train, Magic isn't the cause of Hasbro's woes.
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Apr 19, 2022 14:27
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Elvis_Maximus posted:Hasbro eyeing the "end the reserved list, print secret layers of one dual and three basics" increasingly nervously
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Apr 19, 2022 14:28
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Saucer Crab posted:Magic isn't the cause of Hasbro's woes. But can it fix them!? *slames fist on button labeled 'secret lair'*
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Apr 19, 2022 14:31
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Lone Goat posted:Do sales actually go up when they print busted poo poo? Or do people leave the game in droves when the format sucks and they have to do mass bannings (urza block, mirrodin classic, eldraine, etc)? yeah for example MH2 sold extemely well, and also the game grew during eldraine, but covid kinda screwed with any causation for declines
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Apr 19, 2022 14:32
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Saucer Crab posted:Magic isn't the cause of Hasbro's woes. Hasbro shareholders seeing Magic as the lone bright spot in their portfolio:  HootTheOwl posted:*slames fist on button labeled 'secret lair'*
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Apr 19, 2022 14:34
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Saucer Crab posted:https://twitter.com/HipstersMTG/status/1516396622854463498 and the rest of that tweet train, Magic isn't the cause of Hasbro's woes. yeah, but why should that stop people from complaining about the only part of hasbro they care about
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Apr 19, 2022 14:41
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The obvious strategy: end the reserve list, reprint cards in SUPER secret lairs, which are packs hidden in 1/100 boxes containing old cards The pro tour finals ends up having the draft segment swept by the guy who went P1P1 Black Lotus
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Apr 19, 2022 14:45
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personally I feel like you wouldn't decide to go gently caress with the one part of your company that's consistently, overwhelmingly popular and profitable + has been for many years even through a pandemic in search of more short term profits, but maybe that's why I'm not worth millions of dollars. someone should give me money to see if I'm right
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Apr 19, 2022 14:49
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flatluigi posted:personally I feel like you wouldn't decide to go gently caress with the one part of your company that's consistently, overwhelmingly popular and profitable + has been for many years even through a pandemic in search of more short term profits, but maybe that's why I'm not worth millions of dollars. someone should give me money to see if I'm right
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Apr 19, 2022 14:59
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Froghammer posted:Shareholders legitimately expect infinite growth. Expect Magic to be hosed with 
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Apr 19, 2022 15:01
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Hypothetical: Say WotC were to end the reserved list, and did a secret lair of the five moxes. What would it retail for, assuming Hasbro was trying to maximize volume of product sold while of course trying to make it as expensive as possible. A grand? More, less?
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Apr 19, 2022 15:04
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Froghammer posted:Shareholders legitimately expect infinite growth. Expect Magic to be hosed with I'm well aware but usually they don't prioritize loving with the things that are holding the entire company up first, especially in the weird 'the ceo directly decreed oko should have more starting loyalty' way that magic fans like to say things work.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:05
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flatluigi posted:I'm well aware but usually they don't prioritize loving with the things that are holding the entire company up first, especially in the weird 'the ceo directly decreed oko should have more starting loyalty' way that magic fans like to say things work. is it the same chuckleheads that have been saying HASBRO DEMANDS DUAL LANDS BE RARE despite dual lands being rare since literal day one?
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Apr 19, 2022 15:08
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Lone Goat posted:is it the same chuckleheads that have been saying HASBRO DEMANDS DUAL LANDS BE RARE despite dual lands being rare since literal day one? And force of will use to be uncommon. What does that have to do with anything?
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Apr 19, 2022 15:12
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Lone Goat posted:is it the same chuckleheads that have been saying HASBRO DEMANDS DUAL LANDS BE RARE despite dual lands being rare since literal day one? I'd be amazed if a double digit percentage of the people at hasbro outside wotc who actually have the sway to make big money decisions know literally anything about playing the game, let alone what makes a card good or not
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Apr 19, 2022 15:17
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On a side note, as someone who loved the original Kamigawa block, it warms my heart to see how successful Neon Dynasty has been. 
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Apr 19, 2022 15:20
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Anime sells but who's buying?
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Apr 19, 2022 15:22
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TipTow posted:Hypothetical: Each mox would be a grand a piece, minimum. Cactrot fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 15:24
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TipTow posted:Hypothetical: alternatively, and here's the real devious one they could do, secret lairs have a 1/100 chance of the extra unlisted card being a dual, mox, whatever instead of the general one it usually is, similar to how they're doing an individually numbered limited run of some cards right now.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:36
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HootTheOwl posted:But can it fix them!?  I'm always impressed how more and more disturbing the image gets.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:36
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the best part of the professor's secret lair videos is the weird skits he starts them off with the little screaming secret lair head he smashes on the table and then it squeezes out from under his fist to scream about secret lairs some more is my favorite
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Apr 19, 2022 15:39
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Cactrot posted:Each mox would a grand a piece, minimum. I don't keep up with #mtgfinance and last I knew unlimited Mox Sapphire was something like $1,600. Just checked on scryfall, and lol.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:41
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aaron forscythe is the one who knows enough about the game to actually facilitate power creep; indeed, the idea of fire design was specifically attributed to him in the article which first introduced it after war came out. but I can't imagine he would have had cause to implement fire design in the first place without the direct input of executives, i.e. chris "the big cock" cocks, the ceo of wotc from 2016-2021 and a former sales executive from microsoft. (notably, cynthia williams, the current ceo, was also an exec from microsoft.) so it's less likely that the cock directly dictated his own card ideas scrawled in crayon to the design teams, and much more likely that he had a conversation with forscythe a year before war came out that went something like "hey, this data we've been collecting suggests an opportunity to explore new revenue streams, including direct-to-consumer products, cross-ip branding opportunities, and a restructure of the competitive scene into an esport utilizing our new digital mtg client. I also want to make our existing revenue streams more appealing. I don't know what that means, but I know you do, so figure it out." then forscythe mandates a power level increase to design coded as the user-friendly "fire" philosophy. this is my most charitable guess as to the events which led to what magic is now. kalel fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 15:51
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kalel posted:aaron forscythe is the one who knows enough about the game to actually facilitate power creep; indeed, the idea of fire design was specifically attributed to him in the article which first introduced it after war came out. but I can't imagine he would have had cause to implement fire design in the first place without the direct input of executives, i.e. chris "the big cock" cocks, the ceo of wotc from 2016-2021 and a former sales executive from microsoft. (notably, cynthia williams, the current ceo, was also an exec from microsoft.) i think people might be overthinking it. i believe that they explicitly said (probably in that one mea culpa article shortly after eldraine came out?) that they wanted to push the line harder was because they saw how much people hated sets like battle for zendikar and ixalan, and then figured because they just hired this brand new play design team that they'd be able to figure out where the line is between "fun because it's powerful" and "too powerful that it ruins the game".
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Apr 19, 2022 15:56
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If they ended the reserve list, I'd expect they'd test the waters first by something like the promo exception (which they say caused an outcry but I don't know a single person who cared) where they'll say the same thing they did last time: that the Power 9 isn't going to show up in packs, it's just that, you know, why is Phyrexian Negator not reprintable, it's not even that good anymore. Maybe they'll extend that to duals because look, every Commander player needs them and the players to supply ratio is like a million to one.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:01
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jpmeyer posted:i think people might be overthinking it. i believe that they explicitly said (probably in that one mea culpa article shortly after eldraine came out?) that they wanted to push the line harder was because they saw how much people hated sets like battle for zendikar and ixalan, and then figured because they just hired this brand new play design team that they'd be able to figure out where the line is between "fun because it's powerful" and "too powerful that it ruins the game". that's definitely a factor too. I'm never going to rule out execs loving with a profitable commodity either directly or indirectly in order to make number go up, however
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Apr 19, 2022 16:05
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jpmeyer posted:i think people might be overthinking it. i believe that they explicitly said (probably in that one mea culpa article shortly after eldraine came out?) that they wanted to push the line harder was because they saw how much people hated sets like battle for zendikar and ixalan, and then figured because they just hired this brand new play design team that they'd be able to figure out where the line is between "fun because it's powerful" and "too powerful that it ruins the game". that's literally what they were saying before eldraine was out, even. they wanted to pivot towards making sets more powerful and complex + even said up front that doing so would likely lead to more cards getting banned b/c they thought trying poo poo and banning after the fact was a good tradeoff for having more interesting sets in general eldraine really obviously overshot and they probably shouldn't have decided to do it with the first set of a new rotation in hindsight, but it's a road that led us to some real fun sets and mechanics even if getting there was far from smooth
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Apr 19, 2022 16:05
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basically if there was any bigwig involvement I doubt it was anything past 'I don't know what a lot of these words mean but the players feel like things are stagnant and aren't very invested in playing the game. could you all brainstorm some ways to get people more excited about the product?' except with more corpspeak most of the recent catchphrases have been explicitly about that (Booster Fun!!) and it's a bit overbearing but I don't really know if I can argue that the idea had no merit. maybe if you asked me when eldraine had just come out but they seem to be striking a good balance of complexity and power with time and distance. like, neon dynasty is real loving good and I doubt it'd look anything like it would without that initial pivot. can you imagine what any of the recent sets would look like if they were still making poo poo in the vein of ixalan?
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Apr 19, 2022 16:16
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 https://twitter.com/Foil_Island/status/1516428458552872972
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Apr 19, 2022 16:24
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Captain Invictus posted:the best part of the professor's secret lair videos is the weird skits he starts them off with That was some real inspired "Tim and Eric" poo poo that I very much appreciated.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:25
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yeah that's more what I'd expect. nothing fussy with actual design, just 'let's bump prices on the poo poo people are buying to offset the poo poo that people aren't'
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Apr 19, 2022 16:32
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TipTow posted:I don't keep up with #mtgfinance and last I knew unlimited Mox Sapphire was something like $1,600. Just checked on scryfall, and lol. My mind is permanently stuck in 6th grade as far as ABUR prices go, therefore an Alpha Black Lotus is $300, Moxes go for $100 a piece, and revised duals are $10 each, which are outrageous sums for a child to pay for a game card, and anyways they aren't even that good because you can play as many lands as you want from your hand each turn, so why would an artefact that's just a land be worth playing? Is this like how it's better to play Tundra so your Kird Ape comes in at 2/3 for 1 mana in case you didn't draw a forest? LifeLynx posted:Maybe they'll extend that to duals because look, every Commander player needs them and the players to supply ratio is like a million to one. I'm sure they're also aware of the lucrative market that Chinese proxy sellers are tapping into, given how many streamers are playing with cards that are obviously from MPC or other sources, and how major tournaments like Marchesa are just handing out "playtest" cards for tournament use because of the financial outlay involved. Much like the music industry guy who said "This Napster thing is causing us problems. What if we could charge people every time they play an MP3?" I'm sure there's talk of figuring out ways to somehow recapture that market share
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Apr 19, 2022 16:34
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I do genuinely think it's a little funny that before that price increase was announced people were focusing on hasbro not doing well and how that means mtg is dying but immediately after the article gets posted twitter lights up with 'why would they do this with wotc being so successful' like I even agree the stated stuff in the article is really likely not all their reasoning for bumping prices but also maybe scroll back on your own twitter for a simple explanation
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Apr 19, 2022 16:41
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the high-level hasbro execs who are in charge of their earnings-per-share are not going to be involved in demanding specific changes to magic to make more revenue. they will give orders down the chain to the appropriate people, who will discover they have been tasked with revenue growth of 20% for next year, and told to figure it out themselves. their boss may prod them on some ideas but the hasbro CEO isn't going to be demanding power creep in a magic expansion. people are just not really grasping the level of granularity various levels of execs are going to be operating on, and implementing revenue growth will get delegated down to someone who will have some idea what works and what doesn't. power creep in expansions seems to cause a lot of problems that hurt (not help) sales in standard-legal sets. MH-style power-creeping out eternal formats with new cards certainly seems on the table because it's a way to monetize formats that can't be monetized now (but that ship has already sailed). it's busting the reserved list, a stupid decades-old mistake, that is the easy BREAK GLASS TO HIT EARNINGS thing, not "tell the card designers to make the next standard set more powerful"
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Apr 19, 2022 17:30
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Extort gang, rise up:
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Apr 19, 2022 18:26
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HootTheOwl posted:Extort gang, rise up: Anyone's wrath giving you like 12 mana seems a little bit ridiculous
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Apr 19, 2022 18:35
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Life Insurance + Revel in Riches = "I've made a huge mistake" - Mark Rosewater or Gavin.. whoever.
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Apr 19, 2022 18:44
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Revel in Bitches
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Apr 19, 2022 18:50
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