State of Design 2023
magic.wizards.com
Mark takes a critical look back over the last year of Magic releases to better understand the highlights and lessons learned from each set.

This is Mark’s 20th (!) anniversary as head designer! He lists out a bunch of highlights and lessons from each of the sets in the previous year, a few that stood out:

  • There needs to be more synergy between sets. This has been true since blocks went away and one I really hope they improve upon (or just bring blocks back!).

  • Many players liked having a set (Brother’s War) that looked back at one of Magic’s greatest stories. “Players liked seeing old characters they recognized in card form… They also liked how the design made the artifacts feel like a throwback while still applying modern design technology.”

  • The Transformer cards (in Brothers War) felt out of place. Happy he identified this one. “[T]he core of the set for many players was nostalgia. These players felt seeing cards of a different IP flew in the face of that.”

  • All of the lessons from Aftermath! Set was too small, most (all?) players didn’t like paying the same amount for fewer cards, the set was sold as story-focused but not much happened story-wise, and many players were unhappy about Planeswalkers losing their sparks.

  • @jake_eric
    13•11 months ago

    It’s an interesting read to see what they think people thought of the sets, and it’s good to see that some of the issues I had with sets and opinions I shared are getting to them. But there’s not a ton here that we don’t already know, especially if you’re active in MTG communities already. Like when he says

    The game has plenty of legendary creatures, so why did we turn what was the most unique group of characters into something more mundane?

    I dunno, why did you? Seems like that’s a question that could have been discussed, but it wasn’t really.

    • @[email protected]English
      5•11 months ago

      I mean, I’d rather them say “We really should stop making 100 legendaries each set so the ones that are legendary do still feel special. Also we wanted battles to (mostly) replace planeswalkers going forward, putting only 1 planeswalkers in each set. This allows more back and forth with battles instead of the win more that comes with planeswalkers.” Than “uh, I guess people didn’t like desparking people. Oopies.”

      • @[email protected]English
        4•11 months ago

        Both of those sound great. You’ve got my vote for lead designer of the next Magic set.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•11 months ago

        Also we wanted battles to (mostly) replace planeswalkers going forward That’s clearly not true because they explicitly said they were gonna see the feedback from the Battles before going all on with them .

    • Sandra
      3•11 months ago

      Maybe he personally wasn’t too on board with that strange decision 🤷🏻‍♀️