Post by ThatDamnPipsqueak on Oct 28, 2018 6:10:55 GMT
The full article title was "The Three Things Making You A Bad Designer That Have Nothing To Do With Design", but that didn't fit. The goal of this article is to look at some factors that are holding you (yes you) back as a designer that can't be fixed by copious application of forum games or even copious amounts of set design. These problems can only be fixed by doing things that have nothing to do with custom magic.
1) Lack of familiarity with canon magic formats
I firmly believe that if you do not actively play or actively follow Standard, Modern, Legacy, or Vintage, you have put a hard cap on your potential growth as a designer. The fastest way to learn and actually understand the theory behind card design is to see magic played at the highest level. Watch games and try to understand why good cards are actually good. Learn what would break formats, and what would see 0 play. Having a vague sense of how each format works allows you to contextualize your designs, and keep them at an even power level.
Each format obviously has its own idiosyncrasies and design philosophies, and some are more useful for designers than others. But all have important things to teach from a theory standpoint. Vintage barely resembles Magic at this point in time, but it has so many lessons to teach about the importance of card advantage, xerox theory, one card combos, identifying who is the beatdown, and sideboarding. Every format things that can be learned from it, without exception. Additionally, having knowledge of the formats allows you to use them as reference points and anchors. You can aim to make a set that is on par with WotC's Standard sets, but without having followed Standard at all, you might horribly miss the mark.
This also applies if you are making a set that is intended to exist outside of WotC's domain. Unless your set exists just as an art piece (which I have entirely different and negative feelings about), you're likely making it for a custom format (Custom Standard, MSEM, your own unique standard format, something along those lines), for limited, or as a stand alone piece. In any of those instances, you need knowledge of what works and what doesn't work from a canonical perspective in order to reliably do a good job of executing your own version. Could you make a good limited without having ever drafted before? Sure. Is it likely? Not in the slightest. And even though it is possible, why? There's no need to reinvent the wheel, just borrow and steal from people who know better.
Here's the part where I say something potentially controversial: For the purposes of this point, 60 card casual and EDH absolutely don't count. Magic governed by a social contract plays very differently than Magic played seriously, and the cards and strategies that work (and in some cases excel) in casual formats aren't the same as the ones that do the same in competitive formats. It's harder to learn the importance of card advantage when your friend has an all in tribal elves deck where every card is an elf or references elves in some way.
Anyone else have fond memories of losing to this guy?
1) Lack of familiarity with canon magic formats
I firmly believe that if you do not actively play or actively follow Standard, Modern, Legacy, or Vintage, you have put a hard cap on your potential growth as a designer. The fastest way to learn and actually understand the theory behind card design is to see magic played at the highest level. Watch games and try to understand why good cards are actually good. Learn what would break formats, and what would see 0 play. Having a vague sense of how each format works allows you to contextualize your designs, and keep them at an even power level.
Each format obviously has its own idiosyncrasies and design philosophies, and some are more useful for designers than others. But all have important things to teach from a theory standpoint. Vintage barely resembles Magic at this point in time, but it has so many lessons to teach about the importance of card advantage, xerox theory, one card combos, identifying who is the beatdown, and sideboarding. Every format things that can be learned from it, without exception. Additionally, having knowledge of the formats allows you to use them as reference points and anchors. You can aim to make a set that is on par with WotC's Standard sets, but without having followed Standard at all, you might horribly miss the mark.
This also applies if you are making a set that is intended to exist outside of WotC's domain. Unless your set exists just as an art piece (which I have entirely different and negative feelings about), you're likely making it for a custom format (Custom Standard, MSEM, your own unique standard format, something along those lines), for limited, or as a stand alone piece. In any of those instances, you need knowledge of what works and what doesn't work from a canonical perspective in order to reliably do a good job of executing your own version. Could you make a good limited without having ever drafted before? Sure. Is it likely? Not in the slightest. And even though it is possible, why? There's no need to reinvent the wheel, just borrow and steal from people who know better.
Here's the part where I say something potentially controversial: For the purposes of this point, 60 card casual and EDH absolutely don't count. Magic governed by a social contract plays very differently than Magic played seriously, and the cards and strategies that work (and in some cases excel) in casual formats aren't the same as the ones that do the same in competitive formats. It's harder to learn the importance of card advantage when your friend has an all in tribal elves deck where every card is an elf or references elves in some way.
Anyone else have fond memories of losing to this guy?
If you want to give yourself the absolutely best shot at becoming the best designer you can be, learn a competitive format. Follow it or play it, but take it at least somewhat seriously. Try to understand the theory behind the card choices, metagame, or people's play patterns. Realize what cards are safe and what cards are absolutely not. Because if you don't understand any of these things, there are going to be problems with your designs. And unfortunately, those problems aren't fixable just by iterating if you don't know why your design was flawed.
2) Inability to take criticism
This one is slightly cheating because, well, this doesn't have nothing to do with design. If you are someone who prides yourself in your ability to design cards and/or your ability to grow as a designer, you also have to be willing to listen to negative feedback that you recieve. Because, to be perfectly honest, no designer deserves entirely positive feedback. And the thing that separates the good designers from the bad ones is how they solicit feedback, how receptive they are to it, how they implement it, and how they move forward from that point.
One of the things I personally pride myself in is my understanding that I'm not actually a great designer (yet). In a very Socrates-esque fashion, I am brilliant because I know that I have major flaws, and I actively solicit feedback and testing in order to mitigate them. My grasp on theory and my extensive knowledge of canon magic (see point 1) make it so I don't embarrass myself regularly as far as design goes, but I haven't quite figured out the art of assembling a quality set yet. And honestly, I'm okay with this. I have access to a wonderful community that I can access for assistance. I can send set files to people, and ask them what cards work and what cards really don't.
2) Inability to take criticism
This one is slightly cheating because, well, this doesn't have nothing to do with design. If you are someone who prides yourself in your ability to design cards and/or your ability to grow as a designer, you also have to be willing to listen to negative feedback that you recieve. Because, to be perfectly honest, no designer deserves entirely positive feedback. And the thing that separates the good designers from the bad ones is how they solicit feedback, how receptive they are to it, how they implement it, and how they move forward from that point.
One of the things I personally pride myself in is my understanding that I'm not actually a great designer (yet). In a very Socrates-esque fashion, I am brilliant because I know that I have major flaws, and I actively solicit feedback and testing in order to mitigate them. My grasp on theory and my extensive knowledge of canon magic (see point 1) make it so I don't embarrass myself regularly as far as design goes, but I haven't quite figured out the art of assembling a quality set yet. And honestly, I'm okay with this. I have access to a wonderful community that I can access for assistance. I can send set files to people, and ask them what cards work and what cards really don't.
Attachment Deleted
If you can't read this card's text, it's probably for the best.
If you can't read this card's text, it's probably for the best.
There's a lot of ways that you can fall short on this one. Maybe you are willing to listen to feedback, but you never actively solicit it. Or maybe you are interested in hearing praise, but not critique. I've also seen people who listen to all the feedback they receive, and try to implement conflicting complaints. Or whose first instinct upon receiving feedback is to throw out the card (or set) and start again from scratch. None of these responses are healthy, and all of them are making you a worse designer. The most important thing to remember is that the cards that you make with feedback in mind are almost always going to be better. Sometimes, that means taking the feedback 100% to heart, other times that means ignoring 80% of it.
This also means that if you are a designer, and want to help others improve, you have a responsibility to give them useful feedback. Please check out Yoshi's post on this subject to learn more.
So if you are someone who is resistant to criticism, seriously ask yourself why. I've talked in some of my past pieces about various things that I consider to be common mistakes that the Magic community makes when evaluating cards, so I obviously don't think all forms of criticism are valid, but anything that isn't actively fallacious is probably worth at least briefly reflecting on. Of course, the nature of creative work is that you have to put things you care about and believe in out into the open ot be criticized, and sometimes that backfires. However, if you find that you can't take the heat, you must get the hell out of the kitchen.
3) Universalizing personal preferences
The more controversial title of this point is "Believing that your fun is important", but I'm going to be a little bit more measured here. The best thing about Magic is how personalized it is. Your deck is a representation of how you want to play the game and the things that you enjoy doing. People play better when they enjoy the deck they're playing. And Magic is a really deep game with all sorts of weird strategies being viable. But while everyone has something they enjoy doing in a game of Magic, not everyone enjoys the same things (massive, massive 'duh' moment).
One of the things that really disappoints me is when people describe decks or play styles as "unfun." I can agree that there are individual games of Magic that are unfun for one or more parties (such as intense cases of mana screw, or other games lost due to forces outside of either player's control), but I refuse to believe that entire archetypes are unfun. Why? Because there is always someone who enjoys playing those archetypes. Otherwise, they wouldn't be played. And people enjoying those decks doesn't make them any worse of a person, or less worthy of playing Magic.
So what does this have to do with design? Well, if you are still under the delusion that some things in Magic are "playing the game wrong", then that bleeds into your design. You deliberately won't include cards that enable those strategies, or you will reduce the strength of those decks to the point where they are functionally unplayable while still giving lip service to them. And as a result, you will sabotage the design of your own set because of preconceived notions of what fun is. Your personal preferences become the law of your set, and are ultimately forced upon people who are uninterested in playing your version of magic.
In traditional magic there are somewhere between 3 to 9 different styles of deck. Control, Aggro, Combo are the core three, with Tempo, Midrange, Prison, Combo Control, Toolbox, and False Tempo, all appearing to different extents depending on who you ask. For all practical purposes, the six worth talking about are the first six that I list. There are people who hate every single one of those decks. There is no deck that you can play that someone does not hate. There is no strategy that you can employ that someone does not think is unfair. When you sit down to play a game of Magic with a random person, you have no way of knowing what they enjoy and what they don't enjoy. They might not enjoy losing, period, and as a result you cannot beat them without them getting in a snide jab about "braindead aggro", "wow you didn't let me play anything", "hope you had fun playing solitaire", "your deck is just a pile of good stuff", "you must be some kind of monster to enjoy that deck".
This attitude is, fundamentally, wrong. Trying to apply your personal preferences in an all encompassing, objective fashion is not going to produce a good outcome. Making your set obey bullshit rules ('no countermagic that costs less than 3', 'no cards that can be used in combos', 'no burn spells') makes your set worse, full stop. Trying to apply your preferences for fun while evaluating other people's sets, and trying to convince them to nerf cards from a fun perspective rather than a power level one, makes you worse at giving feedback. Take this as a growth moment, and get the fuck over yourself.
Going Forward
Each of these things is easy to fix. Criminally so, even. It doesn't take a lot of time to watch some Modern youtube videos, or read a few articles on the decks people are building in Standard. Start soliciting criticism actively, and try to genuinely appreciate it when it is given. And try to assess how much your biases affect your design. Most of the time, it is intentional, so that should be easier to identify and fix. Is it possible to be a good designer despite these things? Maybe. I haven't encountered anyone who I respect absolutely as a designer who falls prey to any of them, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. But by doing these things, you are making things harder on yourself for no reason.
I'm very willing to engage further here, especially if anyone has any concerns about how this post applies to them personally as a designer. And if any of these points strike people as particularly interesting, I'm willing to expand further.
This also means that if you are a designer, and want to help others improve, you have a responsibility to give them useful feedback. Please check out Yoshi's post on this subject to learn more.
So if you are someone who is resistant to criticism, seriously ask yourself why. I've talked in some of my past pieces about various things that I consider to be common mistakes that the Magic community makes when evaluating cards, so I obviously don't think all forms of criticism are valid, but anything that isn't actively fallacious is probably worth at least briefly reflecting on. Of course, the nature of creative work is that you have to put things you care about and believe in out into the open ot be criticized, and sometimes that backfires. However, if you find that you can't take the heat, you must get the hell out of the kitchen.
3) Universalizing personal preferences
The more controversial title of this point is "Believing that your fun is important", but I'm going to be a little bit more measured here. The best thing about Magic is how personalized it is. Your deck is a representation of how you want to play the game and the things that you enjoy doing. People play better when they enjoy the deck they're playing. And Magic is a really deep game with all sorts of weird strategies being viable. But while everyone has something they enjoy doing in a game of Magic, not everyone enjoys the same things (massive, massive 'duh' moment).
One of the things that really disappoints me is when people describe decks or play styles as "unfun." I can agree that there are individual games of Magic that are unfun for one or more parties (such as intense cases of mana screw, or other games lost due to forces outside of either player's control), but I refuse to believe that entire archetypes are unfun. Why? Because there is always someone who enjoys playing those archetypes. Otherwise, they wouldn't be played. And people enjoying those decks doesn't make them any worse of a person, or less worthy of playing Magic.
So what does this have to do with design? Well, if you are still under the delusion that some things in Magic are "playing the game wrong", then that bleeds into your design. You deliberately won't include cards that enable those strategies, or you will reduce the strength of those decks to the point where they are functionally unplayable while still giving lip service to them. And as a result, you will sabotage the design of your own set because of preconceived notions of what fun is. Your personal preferences become the law of your set, and are ultimately forced upon people who are uninterested in playing your version of magic.
In traditional magic there are somewhere between 3 to 9 different styles of deck. Control, Aggro, Combo are the core three, with Tempo, Midrange, Prison, Combo Control, Toolbox, and False Tempo, all appearing to different extents depending on who you ask. For all practical purposes, the six worth talking about are the first six that I list. There are people who hate every single one of those decks. There is no deck that you can play that someone does not hate. There is no strategy that you can employ that someone does not think is unfair. When you sit down to play a game of Magic with a random person, you have no way of knowing what they enjoy and what they don't enjoy. They might not enjoy losing, period, and as a result you cannot beat them without them getting in a snide jab about "braindead aggro", "wow you didn't let me play anything", "hope you had fun playing solitaire", "your deck is just a pile of good stuff", "you must be some kind of monster to enjoy that deck".
This attitude is, fundamentally, wrong. Trying to apply your personal preferences in an all encompassing, objective fashion is not going to produce a good outcome. Making your set obey bullshit rules ('no countermagic that costs less than 3', 'no cards that can be used in combos', 'no burn spells') makes your set worse, full stop. Trying to apply your preferences for fun while evaluating other people's sets, and trying to convince them to nerf cards from a fun perspective rather than a power level one, makes you worse at giving feedback. Take this as a growth moment, and get the fuck over yourself.
Going Forward
Each of these things is easy to fix. Criminally so, even. It doesn't take a lot of time to watch some Modern youtube videos, or read a few articles on the decks people are building in Standard. Start soliciting criticism actively, and try to genuinely appreciate it when it is given. And try to assess how much your biases affect your design. Most of the time, it is intentional, so that should be easier to identify and fix. Is it possible to be a good designer despite these things? Maybe. I haven't encountered anyone who I respect absolutely as a designer who falls prey to any of them, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. But by doing these things, you are making things harder on yourself for no reason.
I'm very willing to engage further here, especially if anyone has any concerns about how this post applies to them personally as a designer. And if any of these points strike people as particularly interesting, I'm willing to expand further.
.)
