Why Magic Designers Avoid This Type Of Design and Why We Need More Of It
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev discuss parasitic design and how it has created some of the most unique cards in Magic and why it might be the future of the game.
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Thumbnail Artwork: Parasitic Grasp by Rovina Cai
You guys way missed the meaning of “parasitic design”, among a bunch of other points. Something is a parasitic design based on how many other things it needs to work and, therefore, reduces options for how decks are built. Splice onto arcane is a parasitic mechanic because it can only be utilized with a small subset of cards to be used. Food tokens, comparatively, are not parasitic because you can put a single card that makes a food token in a deck and still use it to its full value (by sacing the food token to gain 3).
Ironically, yugioh is far more parasitic because so much of their design, like your blue eyes example, so many of their card rely on having another specific card or subset of cards to even function, where most parasitic cards in Magic will do something but just be very suboptimal when they are played without support.
Yeah, food was an offhand example of how they’ve built out a mechanic to be fully supported. It was initially designed to be very low on the parasitic scale, but didn’t have a ton of support. There is likely a better one but talking off the cuff it was an example of something that was niche and isn’t anymore.
@distractionmakers I get it's a one-off, and agree with what you're saying, but i still want to say even in the context of the first set food was in, it's not parasitic.
If you have a card that is 1 red and says "deal 3 damage to any target. Make a food." You will always play this over Bolt because you can always use the food in a pinch if you need it.
If you had a splice into Arcane card that was Bolt, I mean sure you can run it (you probably run both) but if you had to choose one or the other, it doesn't matter unless you are specifically doing Arcane stuff
@@xMxM9xSxtechnically you should play "spliceonto arcane" bolt over the usual bolt, since 1. It would probably arcane itself, so in some games you have an option to splice bolt onto bolt.
2. You may know that you don't have arcane synergies, but your opponent won't. It's how you always should play snow basics over normal. And a lot of players complained about it. It's one of the reasons why they made "break the ice", to make playing snow basics have a significant downside, so they are generally worse, unless you have snow synergies.
This is a context issue though. If you made more "arcane" cards, it becomes less parasitic. Tribal lord cards (and tribal cards in general) are all incredibly parasitic design, but it's hardly viewed in the same way because there are hundreds of Elves, and each set has no issue creating more and more elf cards.
There was no real reason to discontinue creating new "Arcane" cards and more support for Arcane beyond Splice, but WOTC has not tried to do anything with those designs. WOTC never tried anything really different with Splice either. There have been 3 total new splice cards since Champions of Kamigawa, all of which got rid of the "arcane" requirement, and since the original Kamigawa block, there have been zero new Arcane cards. Lessons/Learn are equally parasitic as Arcane/Splice, and both could be made less parasitic by simply making more cards with both sides of the mechanism.
This entire argument about Parasitic design goes away the moment WOTC decides to design more cards in that niche. In some cases like they said with Ripple, the design is so narrow that you can't design in that space, Splice is literally only parasitic because they refuse to print more arcane cards or cards with splice. Especially with the card type Arcane, WOTC has shown they're willing to make cards that care about spell types with Lessons and Adventures, There's nothing stopping them from making cards that say "whenever you cast an arcane spell, do something".
Arcane/Splice's real issue is the same issue Buyback has. It's not about the "parasitic" nature of the cards, the real issue with the cards is that you cast the same spell over and over again. "Parasitic design" is a boogeyman that just masks the real issues with the core design of the mechanism.
@@MaximumImpactGames I honestly don't know why they didn't reuse Arcane for Lessons, instead of making a whole new type for them. It's a perfect word to tie into the magical school feel, expands on a mechanic they only lightly used before, and still accomplishes everything they used with Learn.
Splice in the general vicinity of arcane
Splice betwixt arcane
Hahahahah
remove both spells from the stack, then return them to the stack melded.
I actually think ‘parasitic’ is a perfect name for it, but you have to understand the concept from a draft perspective. Remember Magic sets are all designed to be drafted, so I think the designers came up with this term because of this. When designing a draft set or a cube, you often want to have cards that interact with multiple archetypes, stand alone, or gently nudge the player in a certain direction. Parasitic cards are called parasitic because they only synergize with themselves, yet require a high amount of slots in the set in order to be viable to draft. They “eat up a big number of spots in your set, but only care about themselves” hence the term ‘parasitic’. They also force the drafter to ‘tunnel vision’ on that archetype alone, since once you draft them, they encourage you to lock-in to that archetype (because the cards don’t have much overlap with other archetypes) as it becomes harder to pivot to another archetype in your draft (because the cards you previously drafted don’t work well in another deck).
Remember you only have a limited number of slots in your set/cube, so designers have to be careful when including cards with parasitic design. Cube designers and players will forever say that aristocrats are one of the most parasitic archetypes to include in a cube. They require a high critical mass of cards to work, and so also eat up a huge number of slots in the cube. Likewise it’s hard for the strategy to cross over with other archetypes. Creature-type decks often also fall into the same problem.
I don’t think the term really works for formats like standard and such, and so I thought I’d offer up my perspective as a cube player. From a designers perspective, when you think of a slot-in-a-set as a limited resource that you have to be careful with and balance with careful thought, the term makes a lot more sense.
The draft angle is interesting, still feels a bit weird when outside of that context.
@@distractionmakers I always though that when the designers used the term parasitic, they were mostly talking within a single set environment and not the wider game as a whole. I could be wrong though, you'd have to look at every time they used the term.
The term still means something in constructed formats, but instead of it taking up slots in a set, it's occupying design space with a name. It's a lot less harmful in constructed, because you can always just pull a "functional reprint" and turn Morph into Disguise etc, but it's still sitting there impossible to add support to if you don't revisit the plane. Then again, Masters/Supplemental sets exist now, so it's not as big of a deal.
No. This is incorrect. When Maro first talked about parasitic design, it was specifically in relation to how well cards in one set play with cards in other sets.
Energy is my go-to for parasitic design. It only works if you run a glut of energy cards.
Isn't there cards that both give energy and have abilities that cost energy? they might be better when you have many but that does not make it more parasitic than say - goblins..
@@Jawzah Newer energy cards tend to be built that way, specifically to make them less parasitic.
@@Jawzah I think everything that uses energy also makes it, but that makes it less insular, it's still parasitic because it's better when you have a lot of cards with the mechanic.
@@Ninjamanhammer They have synergy with each other but i don't think it's called "parasitic".. Ants are not considered to be parasites of ants.. And energy cards can function on their own - they just support each other.. Perhaps "produce energy" and "use energy" are kind of parasitic - or symbiotic of each other but the cards have both so the cards are designed to work on their own but have synergy with each other..
@@Jawzah
Slivers work with other slivers, that makes them parasitic. Yes, you could play a Muscle Sliver as a vanilla 2/2, doesn't make the mechanic not parasitic.
Elves aren't parasitic, because most elves don't care about other elves.
All energy cards care about other energy cards, that makes the mechanic parasitic, though less so than something like infect.
I feel like your definition of parasitic design doesn't match with Mark Rosewaters definition. I don't believe he wouldn't have said food was parasitic when it was released. Food cards stand on their own. A card can make a food and you can sacrifice it for life. Cycling is the same. You can get full mechanical benefits for a cycling card without astral slide.
That is true. We were using food as an offhand example of a mechanic that has been expanded upon, but it is the best parasitic example.
Food became less parasitic with additional designs. A lot of original Eldraine was just gain a food, have a food, sacrifice a food - all related to food. But the food themes since has had a lot more leaning into sacrifice an artifact, gain 3 or more life, control multiple artifacts - things that food do without being so specific and that other things in Magic do too.
@@distractionmakers I think the critic here is a little off as well though, especially when Energy was considered a parasitic mechanism for many of the same reasons you criticized in the video. Cards like Wicked Wolf have text on them that require specific enablers that only existed within that one set, in much the same way that cards like Eerie Procession is a "parasitic design", simply because no more support was designed for it.
I'm of the opinion that Parasitic design is a contextual issue at best, most of the issues with "parasitic design" have the same play pattern issues that you have with non parasitic design, like Splice and Buyback having the same core issue (playing one card over and over again). There are certainly more cards you can make in that space, but it doesn't really fix the issue of playing the same card over and over again. The issue with the mechanism isn't that there's only a subsection of cards it can be used on, that could easily be remedied by making random draft chaff cards "Arcane" or making splice costs that exile/discard the spliced card.
The Ripple cards and the "specific name" card supercycle from Tempest, Odyssey, and Nemesis (Kindle, Accumulated Knowledge, muscle burst) are probably the best examples of actual parasitic design within the game because their design is narrow AND dependent on another card.
@@Nic1700you are greatly underestimating the bullshit commander players can pull off just by having artifact tokens
I'm an old school magic player. Tbh, I could give two $hits about any of this stuff. The fact that the game has become waaay too complicated has resulted in the alienation of potentially new players and old farts like myself alike. Just take a step back and listen to yourselves talk and read the posts here. Is the average person who just wants to have a good time playing a game going to feel welcome with the flood of mechanics we now have in the game? Enough already. Bring the game back to the basic tenant of the game. Not the Commander b.s. we have today. Anyone here is welcome to disagree with me. But if you do, I feel you are living in a gaming bubble that you're not even aware you live in. Think about it.
As other comments have noted I think your definition of parasitic is wrong. Parasitic means that it requires more of itself to work. Aggro mill is parasitic even though it shows up in a lot of sets, because you need enough of it to kill your opponent otherwise it does nothing, and it has anti synergy with damaging your opponent.
It's also a sliding scale. Affinity for artifacts on an artifact is somewhat parasitic, but affinity for artifacts on a card that itself isn't an artifact is not parasitic. Delve is the opposite of parasitic because it's worse if you have a lot of it.
What you're describing I'd call insular. Though there are mechanics that are technically parasitic but probably wouldn't be described as such because they're so general, like face burn.
That's not how Wizards R&D uses the term. "Affinity for artifacts" wouldn't be considered parasitic because they print new artifacts in every set. "Affinity for Blood tokens" would be parasitic, because they don't put blood tokens in most sets, so that mechanic won't be getting any new blood token cards to support it in most sets.
One of the issues of confusion with all these terms is that they're way too often grouped together, but from a design perspective I think they're much more useful as separate axes - parasitic vs modular being a lens through which designers can examine how cards and mechanics interact with game as a whole, linear vs anti-linear being a lens more for player understanding strategic ramifications of a card or mechanic, and narrow vs wide being a lens through which designers can estimate how much design space and creativity is available within a mechanic
parasitic: design mostly only matters in the set/format it's in (horsemanship, poison, lieutenant, Melira, City in a Bottle, energy)
modular: design interacts generally well with/agnostic to rest of Magic (cycling, kicker, surveil, spree, plot)
linear: design scales in numbers; encourages more of itself in your deck (poison, energy, morph, affinity for artifacts)
anti-linear: diminishing returns more you have of it (delve, epic, exploit, vehicles, saddle)
narrow: mechanic with little design space; often difficult to tune the numbers, or the kinds of effects you can put on the card are limited by the mechanic itself for various reasons such as timing or triggering requirements or repetition (cipher, epic)
wide: mechanic with a lot of design space available; easy to change numbers and effects; room for creativity (kicker, dual-faced cards, sagas imo)
I wonder if some of the goofier mechanics I know my pod has made fun of in the past, things like Crimes or Parties, are a good way to actually avoid parasitic design because they're using something that's been in the game since the beginning in a new way. Like, a Food strategy is going to have very little synergy with cards prior to original Eldraine, but a deck that cares about committing crimes can experiment with every card that's ever targeted an opponent or their hand, library, spells, permanents, or graveyard.
Okay, I still think "crimes" are a goofy terminology choice and a bit broad, but *conceptually*, a new game term that cares about mechanics that have been in the game for decades is a neat way to do it.
Problem is that Party was an undercooked mechanic. WotC drops one set with the mechanic and the pay offs for it was seldom worth the effort. Crime seems alright and the rewards for it seem to be more worthwhile.
@@otterfire4712 I agree, but it was left open-ended enough that it could be returned to pretty easily of they wanted to, though I think labeling different parties for different groups of subtypes might allow for more expansion
@@IskandrArchive I'd say Outlaws were a better management of the Party mechanic. Most of the Party effects were just effects that scaled with the number of party members which capped at 4. Already, your effects are limited in that regard for damage, lifegain, cost reductions. There's also the dependence on having and maintaining 4 creatures different creatures on board. Outlaws allows for crossovers between different tribes in deck construction while not necessarily relying on quantity of creatures on board.
This is exactly it. Outlaws, Party, crimes, 2nd spelling, Flash, these are all mechanics that will get new cards to fuel them in every new set.
Your poison deck, or your arcane deck, or your dungeon deck won't get any new cards to fuel it unless that set specifically focuses on those mechanics again.
Just to be clear, there were food commanders before LotR too. My man Gyome is from Strixhaven. Plus Asmo from MH2
This makes a great point about the issues with Commander and an "eternal world" and the abandonment of block structure. With blocks, you could say "ok, for the next year, this is the way we're going to play" and you can push certain levers up and down. Now, you need power creep to make anything relevant to Commander.
Partially, Commander circa 2010 was fun and appealing because it was a different way to play, and it let you play with cards that you couldn't in other places. Now, everything is designed for Commander and it just becomes all about seeing the same cards in every deck because they are too good not to play.
Blocks sucked. People who grandeurize playing in the same setting with the same mechanics for an entire year of 3 sets, usually were not playing when that was actually a thing. Imagine if you hate cowboy hats in your Magic, well too bad, you have to play cowboy hats and crimes for the next 3 sets.
@@Tvboy777 I was playing then. Much more engaged than I am now, but that’s more about getting older and having other obligations.
Locking behind planes of existence would also force Wizards to return to rarely used planes and to make them more distinct. Right now no one cares what plane anything is from.
I really like the idea but it sadly feels too little too late, unless they go back an errata everything to designate what plane it's from, which i feel like they don't care enough to.
You guys are absolutely my favorite channel on youtube, keep up the good discussion 👌
The bookkeeping for trying to track which cards are considered from which plane after over 20k cards in would be horrendous, and it would only be worsened the longer Omenpaths in the lore allow movement between planes for more than Planeswalkers
If it’s tied to your commander it wouldn’t be too bad. I agree though, omenpaths likely make this untenable.
I am literally one of the most ingrained Commander players on the planet and I gotta say I love this show
The funniest thing is since committing a crime is targetting based, probably the most heinous things you can do in mtg are committing crimes
Things like, deforeststion, genocide, scorched earth policies, mass murder and reanimation. Not crimes.
But running away together and living happily ever after? Thats too far.
All of the things you listed are represented by cards that count as crimes though.
It's funny you guys mention the mechanics or cards that mention another specific card such as the Yu-gi-oh Blue Eyes White Dragon type cards. I was just thinking about that recently with a new card in one of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction commander precons, a card called Tower Winder that lets you search your library or graveyard for a card named "Command Tower" and put it into your hand. They've done this sort of thing in the past but it's usually only utilized for lower powered cards you'd only play in limited or was on some card that referenced a specific planeswalker type, e.g. Ajani, in those beginner planeswalker precons. It'll be interesting to see if that card ends up being played in most multi-color green decks since most multi-color decks want to play Command Tower anyway.
Oh! Is that a real thing?
EDIT: Oh.... it is. Reach and Deathtouch.... at least it doesn't put it in play.
I was about to mention the planeswalker naming cards. I believe Oath of Ajani is the card from that deck; there was also a creature card in the deck that cares about Ajani planeswalkers in some way.
I am late to the party because I am new to the channel, but it is extremely refreshing to hear somebody talking about the amount of food coming out in all of these sets. It’s actually part of the reason why I’ve stopped paying attention to a lot of the newer things coming out and started to deal deeper into what magic previously has produced Regardless of how powerful or power down some of the prior sets have been. There is a big shift and the gathering that seems to be four more concerned with wagoning off of intellectual property rather than focusing on developing the rich law, which has already had a foundation that’s been laid. I care less about the fact that some of the books are not well written as much as I care about the fact that books were written. End of story.
"Commiting a crime" (not to mention so many other names of game mechanics) is such a silly thing, since ostensibly the players are demigods engaging in interdimensional wizard duels. How do laws even come into play?
No mechanic gives you the most you can get out of it unless you build around it a bit. That’s just magic: the gathering.
It's funny because I dislike the Universes Beyond trend of putting as much text as possible on cards, but it does have the upside of giving a space for older mechanics that might be considered parasitic to come back in a setting that feels natural. Food, energy counters, and cascade are the examples that come to mind, but there are definitely others.
How is Cascade parasitic? Shardless Agent doesn't need any support to do the thing whereas Glacial Ray needs lots of Arcane spells and Bristling Hydra wants lots more energy.
@@seandun7083 It inherently clashes with instant speed interaction and other situational cards, which ends up restricting how many decks actually want it (Discover is a riff on cascade that fixed this). It's definitely less parasitic than the other two I mentioned, though.
@@salubrioussnail That's not parasitic. Cheap aggressive creatures clash with expensive haymakers, but neither of those are parasitic. Parasitic means it needs more of itself to work, not that it places some restrictions on deck building.
I think one of the major problem with "commitiing a crime" is that is doesn't care about what you're actually doing so it loses the essence it tries to bring in with the expression of "commiting a crime".
For exemple if i play kenrith i can use the ability of "target player gains 5 life" and target my opponent. And making my opponent gain life would be commiting a crime ?
It doesn't really make sense.
On the other end if i sacrifice a creature to activate some abilities i feel like i'm commiting a crime much more than in the other scenario, yet it is not. Or if i kill a creature somehow or at the very least something negative. But the fact that just targeting the opponent or one of their permanent is enought to commit a crime sounds silly and counter intuitive to the way we call it.
I dislike parasitic design cos (at its worst) it feels like the designers made the deck for me, and half the fun is mixing and matching the cards myself.
If you make a bunch of cards that say "blorbos get +1/+1" and theres only 1 sets worth of blorbos then its not that exciting; you just chuck em all in one deck and see if its good or not.
A card that says something like "whenever you play this or another blorbo create a food token" is more interesting cos it can be play alongside other blorbos and/or stuff that cares about food (cos food can be used in isolation as just lifegain), and wotc have been doing more things like this in recent years.
“With LOTR we finally got a Food commander”
Asmoran and gyome: “are we a joke to you?”
I find it interesting that this is esentialy what they did for Modern Horizons 3. Since they cant make generic modern playable cards withot pushing the power level ip they revisited two parastic mechanics, devoid and energy.
You guys dont give yourselves enough credit. Best mtg channel. You've articulated why i like Outlaws as an "Archtype", pepples are less specific.
Funny .. in the cube community "parasitic" mechanics are discussed quite often, but there it's used for archetypes, that need useless cards to be good .. for example storm .. a storm package runs cantrips, rituals and storm cards .. every deck likes cantrips, but only storm decks want rituals (exept for the og dark .. everyone likes dark ritual) and only storm wants storm cards .. so you have cards in your pool, that no one wants that isn't playing storm and due to cube size it could be possible for no storm cards to show up or no rituals .. so while storm is cool and I run a minimal storm package in my cube ..brain freeze, underworld breach, LED and black lotus, those cards are strong by themself and don't realy rely on the storm mechanic
/edit .. and pot of greed would be absolutely brocken in magic as well ... 0mana sorcery draw 2 cards .. you guys know Gush is banned or restricted in everything? (that counts ^^)
So Hearthstone is just Parasitic Design: The Game.
Two of my personal gripes with magic design is the lack of cards with heavier color devotion and the multitude of mechanics per set. OTJ has a new token, a creature grouping, and 3 mechanics introduced in the same set.
some good conversation here, damn. so many good points about the flavor of certain sets, even recently. LOTR was a fun draft environment because it felt so on flavor with its mechanics, which i find to be pretty parasitic (the ring tempts you, lord of the nazgul gives wraiths protection from ring bearers etc)
I think it’s interesting how wizards has adapted to their most popular format being commander with things like committing a crime being so generic, i feel like it allows for enough set flavor for it to be enjoyed in a smaller environment but still adaptable enough to the eternal formats to stay relevant
I think the flavor of commiting a crime kinda works in the broader context of Magic.
If you're messing with something that's not yours, the crime flavor is only awkward when you're doing something beneficial to the other player in a free-for-all Magic context.
"they can start locking card effects behind these individual archetypes"
you just described "eminence"
that and every other card that brings up the term "commander"
Parasitic, not parasitic, these are loaded terms. R&D just designs the things they like over and over again, and the simpler mechanics get more attention just because they're simple - this has been getting worse as a trend as set printings get more aggressive. The parasitic label gets slapped on after the fact to justify discarded mechanics.
Regarding "committing a crime": I wonder if wotc will ever design any "revenge" cards.
Revenge - If an opponent committed a crime against you since the end of your last turn, do X.
I was imagining the opposite.
Create a batch of creatures called "Enforcers".
Enforcers are creature cards that increase the cost of playing other cards.
Aside from regular stax creatures, examples I imaged were:
a) Magitech Enforcer - Crimes now cost 2 more.
b) Contraband Inspector - Equipment spells now cost 2 more to play. Equipping creatures is now a crime.
c) Roaming Vigilante - Whenever a player commits a crime, the next crime they commit costs 1 more.
Here's what I imagine the creature batching could do:
a) Imperial Quartermaster - Creatures attacking players who have committed crimes against you in this game are enforcers until end of turn. At the beginning of combat, double the power of enforcers you control until the end of turn.
b) Station Chief - Whenever a case enters, investigate for every enforcer you control. Whenever a case is resolved, create a treasure token for every enforcer you control.
c) Crucial Witness - Whenever a player commits a crime, investigate. If you control an enforcer, investigate again.
d) Misinformation Agent - Whenever a player commits a crime, you may suspect target creature. If it is an enforcer, you may suspect another.
e) Arrogant Officer - Whenever an enforcer enters under your control, Arrogant Officer deals 1 damage to each opponent. Whenever an enforcer enters under an opponent's control, the next spell they play costs 1 more.
f) Idolizer - Enforcers you control gain Ward - Pay 3 Life. Non-enforcers gain -1/-0
g) Harsh Overseer - Whenever you attack with enforcers, spells your opponent control cost 1 more until your next upkeep.
There are a handful of things that made me quit MTG 20 years ago, but now I have a name for the biggest reason: "everything bagel" cards, which sabotage the art of deck building. It's much better for a card to languish an obscurity, only to be rediscovered as a new synergy rises to the surface.
As a lot of comments have described, this video is not accurate in its description, it has incorrect statements. It’s to be expected eventually, this team does a lot of great videos, but since they play ALot of different games, it’s hard to be well versed in everything.
I really like Splice onto Arcane and other old Kamigawa mechanics, it makes putting together a commander Deck a challenge, Same apply for other mechanics like foretell, and Mutate.
For sure. It is a real challenge to get unique play patterns to the saturation level needed for a commander deck to function.
I think considering parasitic design as being on a spectrum is important since a lot of the mechanics mentioned are not what I or others would necessarily consider parasitic.
I think the biggest factor to consider is the deck building restriction you put on yourself when playing a parasitic card. A card that tutors a specific planeswalker is probably the most parasitic kind of design there is (it necessitates running another card 100%). But other mechanics more broadly, considering infect or energy, require your deck to have a critical mass of these effects in order to gain the benefit from them.
Shadow, horsemanship, and cycling are functional by themselves and not really parasitic for that reason. Attune with aether is really shitty mana fixing unless you're running energy pay offs.
You're not wrong that this is a god-awful name for a design concept. It doesn't really have anything to do with parasitism at all, if y'all arent explaining it wrong at least, and putting such a specifically incorrect name on it seems like a big issue. Having names for design concepts should be useful as shorthand, but in this case calling it parasitic design only seems to be useful for creating confusion.
Their explanation wasn't wrong, but it was a poor and incomplete explanation. A parasitic mechanic is one that relies on other cards to function. These mechanics are often isolated to a single set by necessity (they need the other cards from that set in order to work), but that's a symptom of being parasitic and not the reason why they are parasitic.
It's "parasitic" because it's mechanics that only benefit the set they release in and don't interact with and therefore contribute to the sandbox of the rest of the game.
Example, energy mechanic. After Kaladesh was released, there were no new energy cards release for years. Anyone who built an energy deck had no reason to pay attention to new sets after Kaladesh block, unless that set specifically featured energy as a mechanic. Energy therefore is not contributing to the best part of the game sales-wise, that new sets will have cards that players will want to put in their existing decks.
After playing with OTJ cards, I kind of feel the meat of the Crime mechanic isnt in the action of committing a crime, but in that almost all of them specifically trigger While that clause is there obviously to prevent infinite combos and tons of stormy stuff you could otherwise do with the mechanic; by making the player aware that they get rewarded more if they purposely hold back a crime-triggering effect for the opponent's turn or on the following turn, it actually makes even your simple "bounce this attacker" "exile this card from your graveyard" feel more which I hadn't even considered to be a sensation the design of these cards would invoke emotionally. I actually feel like the design on the crime-matters card hit exactly the points you two wanted out of design while being the polar opposite of parasitic.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We will have to discuss OTJ’s mechanics more in depth in a future video.
Honestly the best and most insightful content regarding mtg in youtube, love the show!
Just having a little bit of trouble with the audio on this particular video.
Sounds kind of gargly.
Yeah we are having an issue with Forrest’s mic. We’ll have it sorted soon.
crimes not including things like attacking or targeting hand feels like a flavor fail. attacking my opponent feels like way more of a "crime" than using wedding ring lol. that being said, the crime mechanic is in itself really cool, just wish it was easier to remember what it actually was :V
The commit a crime mechanic is pretty stupid.
I think that there are designs that can start out as a parasitic design but then become a more normal design. For instance, if we add a new tribe and have cards that interact with that specific tribe, it'll start off parasitic because it only synergizes with other cards in its own expansion. And if they never print cards of that tribe ever again, it would be parasitic. But if they print more cards for it over time, it could be just another tribe.
When it's just one set, you're probably gonna be using the same cards as everyone else because you're heavily, heavily incentivized to use the predetermined package of 10 specific cards, rather than picking from hundreds of cards like most tribes.
This is what makes them parasitic. If you want to include one of these cards from this new tribe with only one expansion printed, then you're almost necessitated to play these 9 other specific cards in your deck, which "eats up" your deck slots.
As such, I hold the view that parasitic design is almost always bad especially in CCGs, but parasitic design that later becomes non-parasitic design is exempt from this rule.
The problem with parasitic design is that your deck is gonna have either 0 or the same 40 of them. If you have cards that only synergize with the new tribe that is only in one expansion (let's call it the xyz tribe), then either you play a bunch of the xyz tribe together with a bunch of the xyz tribe support, or you play none of it. As such, it either defines your deck, or is irrelevant, which isn't healthy design imo.
If you only have a small amount of cards that would fulfil this condition though, then they aren't parasitic. For instance a spell that is free if you have one specific creature on the field would not be parasitic because it isn't defining your entire deck. Additionally, alt win cons tend to not count. Exodia is only 4 cards in your deck, and cards that can help you draw into exodia, unless they specifically are worded to only search out exodia, are usable in non-exodia decks. Battle of Wits decks are similar in that while it does drastically change the way you build your deck, the cards in that deck are still cards that are conceptually playable outside of a Battle of Wits deck.
I also don't think mechanics such as committing a crime is parasitic as it interacts with a core part of the game. However, if there are cards that synergize with other cards that specifically say in the text "committing a crime", then that would be parasitic, though at that point it wouldn't matter what the text says.
I've also heard of those YuGiOh cards that specifically require you to play specific archetypes such as "If you have a card with xxx in its name on field, do yyy with another card that has xxx in its name in your hand", is merely them designing different classes; different color combinations to be analogous to magic. And as in turns out, mtg already had a way to do this: make the spell use specific colors. YuGiOh requires it due to their lack of any systems similar to mtg's colors, and they've designed around it. This is an exception to the rule of parasitic design being bad: when it's the best of the bad options, then yeah it's a good option
I just want to explain why Yu-Gi-Oh went highly parasitic in design.
It was because early Yu-Gi-Oh had no deck building restrictions. Seriously that's it. Magic had color mana, pokemon had energy, hearthstone has classes, ect.
Early Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments were just nearly all the same deck of the best cards. Parasitic design is the only way Yu-Gi-Oh could make deck archtypes.
The crime thing is meant to be a meme more than to actually represent something happening in the world of the game. It's a common problem lately.
I appreciate the Yugioh representation, the archetypes are my favorite thing about the game, being able to play a bunch of cards that "know" each other in their lore or story is so cool and helps make a deck stick out and do things that would just get banned if it was accessible to every other deck. Sometimes an error occurs where some bonkers cards are dropped that can be used by every deck, but theres hope that Konami will gradually step farther away from that type of card design. Great video guys, keep up the great work.
In FaB parasitic design is thought of more as Siloing. Intentionally reduce options for building a round a card to keep it from being too strong or consistent.
There are cards that look for specific cards now, like Tower Winder.
True. I’d like to see more cards that aren’t so direct though. I think adding planes as a card type, similar to creature type, could open up some interesting design space without telling you exactly what the card is for.
@@distractionmakers There are planes cards, from Planechase? I think what you're trying to describe might be one of the ways I actually build some of my decks. I call it "planeslocked" but like my Omnath Locus of Creation deck uses ONLY cards with art from Zendikar. I also have Izzet Guild, Golgari Guild, and Kestia Enchantments that uses only art from Theros.
But this is a rather hard thing to do especially for worlds that haven't been visited like 5+ times, the decks are somewhat jank maybe slightly more focused than a precon. There's also staples you just can't use like Sol Ring, and I doubt WotC will ever print a Sol Ring with art for each plane. But I do always appreciate reprints getting artwork from different planes.
And doing "Vorthos" things just isn't a very popular way to play Magic.
I would like to see a format where every staple is banned or the players get to use only 5 staples.
Canlander has an interesting system for this. Instead of banning cards they give them points and a deck can only have up to 10 points.
Homelands did this with Apocalypse Chime. Partner with and the planeswalker tutor creatures kind of enter this space too.
Haha man apocalypse chime feels really salty. I’d like to see the idea in the positive rather than destructive.
@@distractionmakers Agreed! This is back when they thought blocks might have different game rules to do with the theme of the plane, which they have explored with Clue and some other things.
Hobbits and food go hand in hand. It's lore accurate.
What i learned by playing a lot of Wild in Hearthstone, is that there's an event horizon of card quantity where perfect balance is not possiboe, and the entire card pool cannot be designed for. At this point, I don't think Magic card designers should design cards around Legacy or Vintage.
Much to the chagrin of people who play those formats, who think otherwise very strongly.
Totally agree. The issue is that a rotating format is not the most played format anymore for Magic. Players have rewarded WOTC with increased profits when they print cards for commander, so they continue to follow that line. Because players have chosen this path WOTC will need to develop new ideas to keep making new cards that aren’t just more powerful than the previous cards.
They literally do not design cards for legacy or vintage. Those formats are an afterthought at best. The issue with designing cards focused on EDH is they bleed over into eternal formats like legacy/vintage thus creating an artificial rotation.
As i understand it at least, what MaRo means by parasitic design are strictly mechanics that need more of the same mechanic to function or "use it's potential" - and parasitic design isn't backwards compatable.
So splice onto Arcane is parasitic, as is something like Energy. Something like Food or Cycling, and even Ripple, are not parasitic tho, as their inherent effect works to its own fullest extent without any other support. Neither are tribal cards really, because when we get a new Pirate Lord, it doesn't only funtion with other Pirates in this set, but also with every Pirate ever printed. Same goes for committing a crime. Otherwise it's like saying every creature ever printed is parasitic, because Goblin Bombardment exists.
So there’s a part in the middle-ish of the episode where we’re talking about things that are not parasitic, like tribal. I think we weren’t clear enough. In our research we found parasitic design is a scale where you have things that are just slightly parasitic like venture into the dungeon or the ring temps you vs things that are very parasitic like splice onto arcane.
Crime and Plot.
Perfect design space.
Tempted by the Ring.
Close but not quite it.
(Note: cEDH player)
I feel like Food is a bad example of this topic. Food is a mechanic that had synergies with three extremely popular mechanics in Magic in tokens, artifacts, and lifegain. Before it became more commonly used as its own archetype it could be used in any of those three synergies already. Great video though. I love hearing you guys talk about the design of Magic even if I don’t agree with every point you make.
Haha yeah, food wasn’t a good example of parasitic design. We used it as an example of how a lot of support had been printed for a mechanic, but we should have used a parasitic one as an example.
Cipher was from the RETURN to ravnica, not the first ravnica
11:20 free bingo space
guy on the left's mic is slightly messed up and you can't unhear it when you notice it.
Yup. We figured out what the issue is and it’s fixed now.
We could say modern horizons 2 had extremely parasitic desing to modern. Since all these evocations and ragavan are extremely strong and easy to slot in any deck that can play the colors or even decks that splashed red just to play a 1 drop that can run away with the game if unchecked.
Food is definitely not a parasitic desing. It's a great fucking desing. New flip sorin generates food tokens and you definitely don't need your deck to have anything to do with food.
That Yugioh tangent is wild. I really don't see the point in expansion hosers or buffs, Magic moved away from those for a reason. The closest they come to that now is giving everything a type/subtype and referring to that. Like Time Lords or Rebels or Allies or Affinity (for Artifacts), etc. You really don't have to go to Yugioh archetypes when you already have Colors and such.
I think it would be really neat if they expanded use for planeswalker types. It used to have some cool rulings back a while back but now its essentially useless other than that one giedon emblem planeswalker. They could create whole support decks around using a certain type of planeswalker which ive only really seen in Against the Odds.
They've done a few cards that reference Planeswalker types, but most of them were just not very good, and we're just hella narrow tutors. Outside of Gideon, Bolas and Tezzeret are the 2 big ones that come to mind.
@andrewamann2821 exactly maybe have a creature with an ability where you pay one and remove a loyalty counter from a garruk planeswalker to give it trample until end of turn. or an artifact that cares about how many abilities of a jace planeswalker was activated.
There's the Triumph cards that care about having a planeswalker with a specific type for a larger effect.
I've always thought Confined design is a far better term.
I like insulated.
I don't think ripple would be bad if it were also unrestricted in how many you could put in the deck. Like rats or dragons.
Would this be a storm deck nightmare? Sure. It would be fun though wondering if you'll hit or whiff. Also leads to neat jank
Maybe a better word could be isolated design?
I like it!
Would lifelink/gain be a parasitic ability/mechanic? It doesn't do anything on it's own really, but it requires cards or abilities that do something when life is gained to be anything besides "you extend your potentially useless life total a little bit more".
Yeah it could be viewed that way. The life gain is technically gaining a resource even if it’s not as impactful as cards or mana. Mechanics that are the most parasitic would be something that has no benefit if more of its type of effect aren’t around. Lifelink at least gives you something on its own.
If you think your own pebble analogy is ridiculous, what analogy would you make about this very podcast? Might want to talk about that with your therapist. ❤️
If it's not clear, I liked the analogy...
Talking about crimes coming up again in future set, I wonder if alchemy will have cards that care about the number of crimes committed during the game.
I doubt it. Crime makes sense to care if it has happened or not, but when you care about amount there are things that can just completely bloat the numbers.
This sounds like companion but for planes, like get x effect if all the cards in your deck are from ravnica
Parasitic has nothing to do with set locked mechanics. Energy is heavily parasitic, it only works with itself. There is no inherent way to generate energy other than putting energy cards in your deck. There is no inherent way to use energy other than putting energy cards in your deck. Energy is in the fallout Precons and it's still parasitic.
There is a scale to it to. For example, instants are parasitic. Once you put one in your deck, the mechanic encourages you to put more, since having one option on your opponent's turn is good. Having multiple options at differing costs is objectively better. It's not parasitic to the same degree as energy but the roots are there.
The Parasitic term means whatever Wizards says it means, so..
The left guy’s microphone sounds messed up.
Yeah we had some recording difficulties. We will square it away asap
I don't know, I feel like crime is close enough to ludonarrative to ressonace to be cool.
For me it’s about the lack of change in play pattern. I think plot is more successful in that way.
I love the food mechanic i started playing standard during that era after being a kitchen table casual player. I really enjoyed the witch that lets me kill my opponents with food... You could say it is a very flavorful mechanic... Yeah i know ill see my way out because no one likes puns anymore.
Nice video.
So I'm not a game designer though honestly I would love to be one it is a dream of mine... I just finished the video and I got to say I was a bit shocked no one brought up banding. I would have assumed it was the poster child for this sort of discussion.
Haha banding is another good example, most players don’t know what it is or how it works though.
@@distractionmakers
That's totally fair I alluded to being a kitchen table player, well my roommate was probably the only person always trying to play his banding deck haha. Very fair point that most players wouldn't know about it!
How about planelands
Lands that can placed in the command zone and can only be played after the commander is played
The plane land unlock powerful effects
Hell yeah! That’s a super cool idea.
I’m also thinking each land would be mechanical focused
So is Yugiohs summoning system considered parasitic? Specificlaly fusion, xyz, link summoning?
The game has changed a lot over the years but in general, it requires other monsters with certain restrictions to work. That makes it parasitic?
Effectively yes. Parasitism in general means that a card requires another card to be played. The more specific that is, the more parasitic.
A solution I could imagine to this is to design something with the broadest way possible but to include the set mechanic for synergy or as a bonus.
For example, do X. If you also do or control Y, then (set mechanic). We've seen this with corrupted and crime. That way, flavor is maintained, there's backward compatibility, the ceiling is higher, and it still allows the mechanic to be revisited and be made more meaningful in future sets.
(Kamigawa will forever be my favorite set for how special, weird and unique it was.. even with all the wasted potential and the bad)
Mechanics depending on other parts is bad design in my opinion. Astral Slide being an excellent example of an element being added that changes how an existing thing works. With "Arcane" spells being "parasitic" onto other things with effects accordingly-balanced!! Thematically and design-wise, it only makes sense for Spirits creatures manifesting in the physical world to bring around extra effects (splicing onto creatures is "safer").
Honestly, Kamigawa's Splice onto Arcane not being explored further or being designed in such a way (without proper planning), hurts my feelings! But not even creating an Artifact that says "all your Instant and Sorcery spells are Arcane"!? Magic has always felt, like a game that doesn't do what I personally would like it to do 🤣
I wonder if WotC could get away with building Commander from scratch. Everytime I think about the format, it's just evident that most of it was not "designed" as much as it evolved organically. Maybe by starting a game with similar mechanics but free of the baggage, they could actually pick a direction.
Fix Hearthstone next. We need the help. 😢
MtG basically has archetypes now anyway. I like the design of flexible deck building where you can mix match cards like old MtG but there's definitely more design intention in grouping cards and decks like tribal seem to be more popular anyway. Archetype design allows the game to evolve easily with power creep minimalization, be easy to pick up, and balancing and stuff.
IMO Digimon and Grand Archive handle that archetype deck design (and scaffolding stuff) well. Better than YGO who set the baseline.
Agreed.
As someone with a Greta food commander deck, I feel called out! 😉
This is something my partner and I have been looking at with our game - and can we use parasitic design to enforce a kind of pseudo-rotation with our game.
Haha no shade on food commanders merely pointing out how the mechanic evolved over time 😆
@@distractionmakers Oh I definitely agree with you. Just felt the need to give you a little ribbing back.
Some of us were talking the other day. A reverse parasite design maybe would be treasures. Like Red is supposed to have "temporary" mana while green is supposed to be the permanent mana color (hence mana dorks and land fetching). But how to represent that mana? A token for the "storage" of it is actually a brilliant idea.
The problem is that they made it ANY mana, when really originally they probably should have made it something like a "token ruby" card that you could tap&sac for red mana.
Then that would give you space to explore generating mana for the other colors (like maybe a mono red boros themed card that generates token "pearls" to get you that white mana you need for other boros cards). But instead they made treasures which... well are dangerously close to breaking the game and now making red the best rainbow color.
(Also it bugs me that it's "treasure" and not token lotus petals)
I think you guys definitely pinpointed something that is currently a challenge for magic designers. Creating an "archetypal" design to steer the progression of the meta and control the power of eternal formats is a great idea, but you never mentioned magic's 5 colors as a system that already does this in a way and has done this forever. The real issue with Commander and Eternal formats in this sense is the high powered mana bases, like free 5 color lands in Command Tower, or fetch lands dominating all formats they are legal in. These powerful manabases function as a way to bypass the game's original design, which was still controlled in a way, but not as limiting to the player as "archetypal" design(like yugioh).
Great point!
i am confused. how is your recommendation about plain specific really different from tribal? for instance the pre modern horizon era of legacy had legacy elves a combo tribal deck that has a specific core from one set that is complement with cards from other sets. do you recommended something more than that and less than city in a bottle?
like do you want a commander card like fierce guardianship, but it is only for wizards commanders? something like the restrictions that companions enforce? i am not sure what is the direction you wanted to go exactly, but i kinda agree.
Comparing it to tribal is correct. But instead of being based on creature type it would be based on the plane the cards come from. Effectively giving a new dimension to create play patterns for.
@@distractionmakers i am trying to think how one could phrase it within the rules of magic and this is where i have difficulty. they have said that they are not going to print another card like city in a bottle. a card that references sets.
maybe they could lock specific keywords to sets and push that? like instead of having descent being as generic as it was make it relevant with ixalan creature types only or something like that?
So you want more hyper specific stuff like city in a bottle you say?
Arabian nights style design op I guess.
Splice Onto League's Hit Animated Series
You guys are hilarious. I enjoy listening to your thoughts on game design. You both have a good depth of experience with design. Many of your thoughts are insightful and coherent. Much of your foundational understanding of Magic seems to come from a competitive formats perspective (draft, sealed, standard, modern, etc.). You do struggle with understanding the Commander format and have no idea what it is for many players of the format.
Your proposed solution to one of your perceived problems with Commander is to take the most complicated format of the most complicated game ever made and make it more complicated by adding lore-based restrictions around planes all while Wizards is actively mashing planes together and doing multiple crossover sets just in the last 12 months. This is truly funny and I sincerely thank you for the laughs this brought me.
Commander isn't a designed game. You criticize it as if it were like Standard MtG, or Modern, or MKM limited. Wizards designed those game formats. Wizards curates and evolves those formats both through initial design and follow-on errata, clarification, and ban lists. Commander is a community-run framework for game design.
If you are not getting the Commander experience you enjoy...
1. Look first to yourself. Are you looking for a game design and then a play-it experience? Are you designing decks that you want to play and others want to play against, or are you designing degenerate monstrosities. Are your decks repetitive one-note broken records or are they Jazz performances? You control yourself or should. Model in your own design and play what you want to experience.
2. Look next to your playgroup. Do you play with randos, or at a venu with managed culture, or with dedicated pods? Commander is a social game and if you are having problems with others look to the environments you are playing in, and the conversations you are having. I mostly play at a FLGS that runs an open commander tournament with 60+ weekly participants. That store gives out prizes, but only for best sportsman and most creative decks. Those incentives along with store leadership and direct player communications create a culture of play that is positive and persistent.
3. Look finally to your in-game plays. Have you discussed power levels and/or what you all hope you experience? Are your plays in line with those expectations? Are others? If not, do you speak up or silently fume. Commander is social. Speak. Some groups are competitive (only victory), or casual (fun journey), or experiential (do the thing, win or lose), or social (any deck with do, let's talk). Understand yourself and your audience, and promote that understanding with others.
Commander isn't a puzzle where you have to finish putting together the picture on the box.
Commander is a box of assorted Legos. You collectively own what you and your fellow players make of it.
the difference is that lego does not have a win condition, and magic does. the fundamental issue is the kingmaking problem, and that will always exist for competitive multiplayer games with 3+ players. if players are expected to spend all this effort just for a chance at having fun while risking any number of unfun issues arising (wasting time arguing about who to kingmake, being forced to wait around after being eliminated, arguments about power level of decks/commanders, spending loads of money on cards that may not be playable or fun), why bother?
I know they will never do it, but they should do a Commander points system. They can do a point system adjustment once per year or even more infrequent. Maximum 10 points. Fast Mana 3 points each. Sol Ring 2. Ect. That way you can still have whatever be legal, just not jammed together.
This called Canadian Highlander look into it. Basically edh point system like u said but also no commanders
Canadian highlander uses this system and it’s really interesting.
This is what Canadian Highlander does (except their format is 2 players and 20 life, but you could just as easily play with 4 players and 40 life). If you and your play group want to do it, then go for it -- Commander is a community format, there's no need to wait for WotC or the Commander Rules Committee to institute this.
I got the idea from Canadian Highlander. It would go a long way to future proofing the format. I would even put fetch lands at point each. Plausible deniability for not putting them in precons, cutting down on 5 color greed piles and less shuffling. The big problem would be how to relay this information to the target audience who allegedly don't read anything about Magic and play at the kitchen table
Slight tangent, but the commit a crime thing is even weirder because some stuff isnt even your doing in a way. Like you play a desert which deals 1 damage to something (supposedly because it's a harsh environment i guess) but that is somehow a crime?
It's such a thematic headscratcher
Hahaha, that is such a funny observation!
Someone should make a channel making fun of such instances.
That's a weird example considering you played the desert.
Committing a crime was just a way to shorten a particular set of game actions that multiple cards are going to refer to. Don’t think about the set as the “commit a crime” mechanic set, it’s all a bunch of things that really say “If you targeted your opponent, or a permanent they control, or a card in their graveyard, do X” but putting all that text on every single card in the set not only takes up a lot of space in the text box but is something people are going to be reading a lot. Another example is historic, a lot of cards from dominates referred to things that were legendary, artifacts, or sagas, but instead of writing all that out on everything that cared about it they shortened the classification to a single thematic word. In this case it happens to be “commit a crime” which works with the outlaw theme of the set but you can also look at it from another standpoint in that a lot of things that are used to target your opponents stuff are crimes. Murder, treason, imprisonment, causing duress, etc. those cards that do target things that aren’t yours typically are the same effects as cards that are literally named after crimes. The baseline effects like “destroy target creature” or “gain control of target creature” and other things are named after crimes. So playing those kinds of cards makes sense from a flavor standpoint to be committing crimes. There are of course the cases of flavor fails where you do something that isn’t crime related but does target your opponents’ stuff and now becomes “a crime” (like secret rendezvous)because of how vague the term is but it’s just a flavor thing. The term shouldn’t be making you think about the game in a different context, nobody thought historic meant to treat artifacts as antiques or archeological discoveries instead of just the tools and items they are, “commit a crime” is just a way to shorten a paragraph of text that will appear on many of the cards in the set.
>the first ravnica set
Bro... Why
Please make some videos on Flesh and Blood TCG! 😊
Parasitism exists on a spectrum and always has the possibility to change over time. Typically the term was used by Magic designers in the context of the whole of Magic or eternal formats, but I think its applicable to smaller card pools too. If something is parasitic its not backwards compatible with existing Magic, or it doesn't integrate well with what's around it. The first time a mechanic comes out, it might feel parasitic if its very linear. Splice into Arcane and Committing a Crime are great examples. Arcane as a subtype was only in one block and because it required playing with itself to be maximized, it was parasitic. If there had been more arcane since, each time it would have gotten less and less so. Crime could have very easily been a subtype on instant and sorceries too, but that would have had a similar problem. The way it turned out provided a new context to targeting which has been happening since the beginning of Magic, so it's not parasitic. When Standard was the focus, I think they were more okay with parasitism because the context was the block before and after. But now they design more for Commander and more eternal formats, so their tolerance is much lower.
I love parasitic design, I love City in a Bottle, I love Kamigawa spirits that recur weaker Kamigawa spirits, I love Eldrazi, I love card games
Parasitic mechanics would be ones that eat the foundations of the game to the point of overrunning it. Food, energy, affinity, phyrexian mana, all things that make it impossible to play any other way.
"Parasitic design" reminds me of when animals get stuck on an island where they adapt in ways that only make sense in the context of that specific island ecosystem, and thus don't look like anything else. Island design? Tasmanian design? Silo design?
That is interesting, in evolutionary biology it’s called Foster’s rule.
The other term I've heard for this is insular design, which ties in with what you're saying
Parasitic is what the "genius" rosewater doesn't want to continue to support due to a lack of creativity and/or imagination, was poorly designed initially without a broader scope in mind, and lacked the necessary foresight to work well with existing and future mechanics.
Wouldn't it make sense to call it Contingent Design? Because the mechanics are contingent on the set, you can't have ninjutsu and bushido in new capenna if you care about internal narrative consistency. I get why you would call it Parasitic Design when it comes to buildings because it gives the impression that the building is "feeding off" the old one but even there I'd call it a poetic choice at best.
Yeah, contingent makes more sense.
astral slide mention! sorry, astral onto slide
Bro, you think graceful charity is better than pot of greed? You must not remember what charity does. Its good but it is not POG
Your prominently displayed poster boy, Dockside Extortionist, is one of the most blatant parasites in the game.
First?
This is an interesting discussion because wvery single mechanicw that you like as parasiticnis disgusting and worthless to me