The 'Metaban' Project - A rolling ban project for VTES Tournaments

If you must poll, I'd say that the voting should be on an entire list, not card by card. Have a few people suggest lists of 20, winnow it down to a few that look good and are noticeably different, and then do the voting.

Jeff wrote:

This isn't true. Getting perspectives from the widest possible audience assures the best decision.

Suoli wrote:

I'm not sure if your choice of words was deliberate or not but decision by polling is not the same as getting perspectives. That would be a survey. Surveys are fine for informing design goals. They're terrible for designing.

Quite deliberate choice of words. There is a wealth of research that demonstrates a diverse group will make a better decision than an individual.

I do agree with you that a small dedicated group can set a course of action and stick to it, while soliciting input from collaborators to come up with a good end product.

You just have to be sure that the entire breadth of responses is sought or else you might miss some important feedback.

Jeff wrote:

Poor organization and poor execution are separate issues from best decision-making strategies.

Suoli wrote:

Why do you say that? I'm arguing that to increase the depth of the game requires vision and complex thinking. Given that premise, a large, unorganized crowd of visionary geniuses has close to no vision or capability to process complex problems. I would say that recognizing this flaw has everything to do with decision-making strategies.

I refer to the organization and execution by a decision-making body, not the particular organization or protocols to follow a decision-making strategy.

Visionaries plan and execute. Geniuses solve complex problems. It's great when you have a team that can accomplish both those goals.

I'm looking more on the broader spectrum of banning whole disciplines/clans/sects per quarter.

Jeff wrote:

Visionaries plan and execute. Geniuses solve complex problems. It's great when you have a team that can accomplish both those goals.

So are you saying that the general public should be that team? Because that's what I'm discussing, the notion that making a decision entirely by polling is a bad idea. Not guided by polling, dictated by polling. You're not really directly addressing that idea so it's hard to tell if you're agreeing, disagreeing or discussing something else entirely.

Shockwave wrote:

If one 'Season' has a poor selection of 20 cards, what does it really matter?

Degenerate deck types can lead to absolutely no fun. When, for example, the game revolved around Return to Innocence, it wasn't that difficult to find players who weren't playing much because it was dull for them. I saw numerous tournament games that basically devolved into who could get their large, RtoI, Soul Gem bleed through and topple the table pretty quickly after that.

This wouldn't affect everyone, of course. Some people would want to play the most competitive deck possible, and grind their opponents into submission. (That's totally cool.) But a bad six month block of 20 cards could easily mean that a player just decides to stop playing during that time. Do they come back?

Shockwave wrote:

So that Season will see some truly odd things occur (either the domination of a deck inadvertantly buffed by the change, or another accidentally driven into the ground) but that's entirely the point - To encourage metagame shifts and try to see new ideas pop up.

Shaking up the metagame should be about increasing diversity - smudging a few tier 2, tier 3 decks up higher, maybe kncoking a few tier 1 decks down a bit. If it results in a deckstyle having domination of the game, that's almost always going to be bad for the game.

Back in Jyhad/V:TES days, for example, it took a lot of time and effort before people got better at dealing with stealth-bleed. I saw numerous new players drift away from the game after the first few times their cool combat deck got ruthlessly ousted by Malk sneak-bleed.

Given that some rotations of Magic have essentially devolved into "Play one of these four decks, and really, really, really carefully manage your sideboard substitutions", V:TES actually has a pretty good range of playable decks. Wrongheaded meta-bans could seriously screw with that. It's very easy to nuke key cards from popular strategies - let's ban Freak Drive, Anthelios, Lilith's Blessing, Deflection, Giant's Blood, Immortal Grapple, Mind Rape, Villein, Parity Shift, Power Structure, Voter Captivation, Telepathic Misdirection, Delaying Tactics, Kine Resources Contested, Majesty, Direct Intervention, War Ghoul, Mylan Horseed, Anarch Convert, Palla Grand, Week of Nightmares (21 cards) and you've just crippled a lot of decks. To do similar damage to stealth-bleed, you'd need to spend vast numbers of cards on it.


And then going back to your first point...

Shockwave wrote:

Incidentally - The polling suggestion was precisely because it creates further 'entanglement' from players, and keeps them attached to the game.

Alternatively, it means that a player sees the decks they like have been destroyed because the cards required have been meta-banned and there aren't sensible replacements for them. The meta-banning was wildly popular in the poll, so there's little chance of it being reversed anytime soon. That's pretty much the opposite of entangling.

Freak Drive, Anthelios, Lilith's Blessing, Deflection, Giant's Blood, Immortal Grapple, Mind Rape, Villein, Parity Shift, Power Structure, Voter Captivation, Telepathic Misdirection, Delaying Tactics, Kine Resources Contested, Majesty, Direct Intervention, War Ghoul, Mylan Horseed, Anarch Convert, Palla Grand, Week of Nightmares

Some or even most of those cards can be replaced by other cards, unless you are abusing the card. The very point is to play those cards, you would otherwise not.

E.g.:

Freak Drive - Forced March (play with a different crypt)
Deflection - 2 other DOM bounce cards are still there (again, adapt the crypt)
Giants Blood - who even builds their game AROUND GB?...
Villein - Minion Tap
Any PA - shitloads of other PAs, but not that cheesy
Delaying Tactics - Poison Pill or intercept
Majesty - alternative PRE combat ends
and so on...

That is the very point - to think of alternatives, not abuse known tricks. If few archetypes get nerfed, is this such a bad thing? Can it be nobody can build a new deck anymore?.. If so, there is no need for any new cards - the decks are perfect and god forbid something makes them less so.