A shower thought which applies not specifically to MTG, as it would obviously be a different game.
What problem does this idea try to solve?
Balancing. It is hard to balance every card during design phase (or even impossible, as can be shown), which results in some overpowered cards which make the game less fair.
How?
Supply and demand. A card which is played often (by many players, in many games) has it’s mana cost increased slightly. A card which is played rarely becomes cheaper.
Implications
This is probably not feasible with most mana costs sitting in the 1-digit-range. We can’t make a 2-cost card “slightly” cheaper. So we would either need a mana system which works with decimals (e.g. 3.1415 CMC), or raise the integer system to a higher plateau (e.g. 314 CMC)
It’s also only contemplable in digital versions, where a server can monitor every card drop, and adjust costs accordingly.
A big drawback is that your deck’s costs can change over night (or even between consecutive games), forcing players to edit their decks more frequently. A partial solution could be a notification system, and/or scheduling the recalculations to a slower frequency, like once per week or once per month.
A big advantage is that we now have an impartial Big Brother watching the balancing. Humans can err, crowds and echo chambers even more so. When people complain about an imbalanced card, is their cause justified or is it just a small but loud minority? Monitoring the cold hard data seems like a better way, and automated problem solving likewise.
What are your thoughts on this idea? Do you know another TCG which applies something similar?
Personally one of the things I like about MTG is that they primarily ban cards as a solution. Other games change rules, have errata, or simply remove cards from existence. Banning cards maintains the functionality of both the game and card. It enables discussion about banned cards coming back, you can have no ban list tournaments, or even try gauntlets of banned cards to better understand them. Changing the text of the card makes that impossible, digital only card games can just remove the card from your collection, and discussing which years’ ruleset to use as a group is way harder than agreeing on a banlist. Especially for a game like MTG which has new cards coming out almost every other month, I think it’s the best way for designers to push boundaries but still let players dicuss their decisions
Actual arguments aside: capitalism doesn’t magically produce the results that its proponents say that it does and introducing it as a solution almost certainly never produces the intended results. Unless the intendes result is “one asshole figures out how to game the system and make it worse for everyone who isn’t him.” Which unsurprisingly, is not what I want from my card game
You’re right, this would be very unpractical for analogue play. I thought it has to be digital. But then another person in this post pointed out that Penny Dreadful is a thing, which seems to work with printed cards, although it has it’s banlist change from season to season. Granted, checking what is banned/legal (and modifying your deck accordingly) is much simpler than checking each mana cost.
I’m not a fan of capitalism, it was just a metaphor to convey they mechanic. Now that I think closer about this, they even differ in that. I did not have “supply and demand” in mind, since the supply in a digital TCG is essentially infinite. It’s more about rating cards based on their popularity, whereas popular items in capitalism can be dirt cheap (e.g. tap water). One of the other major differences is that in capitalism, people can reinvest their capital to gain more capital. I don’t see how that could be a thing in ‘my’ idea. But the system would need some protection against deliberate manipulationg. Yet another person proposed a solution to this; only monitor tournament decks.
I hear what you’re saying but all of this dances around the inherent reality of the game that we all play. There are a lot of people who have full time jobs making sure we enjoy playing this game. Divorcing a TCG/CCG from capitalism is impossible as long as the party that runs the system exists for profit. The One Ring is an incredible card specifically because capitalism pushed it to be one
What I think you’re proposing is an open source card game, developed by a like minded group of individuals who want to make the most fun game possible utilizing behavioral-economic trends as self regulating measures. Which honestly sounds incredible to me, but unfortunately I think that game will only ever exist once we invent Star Trek style replicators and live in a post-scarcity society
I don’t see it yet, please help me out. Maybe it helps if you can find a specific example.
Can you describe a scenario how an asshole could game that system?
Generally I think MTG is probably the most capitalism-ruined game. It annoyed me much when starting to play as a teenager. Whenever a friend upgraded their deck, others were kind of forced to spend money as well. Because the rich guy had access to all the powerful cards (= relatively low mana cost for their effect / strong effect for their CMC). Isn’t that exactly what a balancing approach would alleviate? Everyone has access to all cards, and all cards receive a CMC which matches how much players value it.