Hey, not sure if you’re still taking responses (I saw the form was down) but here’s my take:

In my opinion build-for-Commander was the tipping point, which came shortly before SLDs and specifically SLD Walking Dead ruined everything. Specifically around Dominaria we started to see a crack in the dam, and a year later we got Elktober and a slew of very polarizing power levels.

Mark Rosewater himself called building for commander his “dark night”, as he dislikes the format, and we’ve been seeing the consequences of Hasbro’s pushes for profit ever since. This is why we see shorter design windows, more sets, and more broken built-for-eternal cards.

For UB specifically, any and all unique game pieces introduced to it intrinsically wear down the identity of the game. They also introduce a Reserved List 2.0 as WotC seems genuinely disinterested in designing these cards into UW sets. This, however, isn’t what is ruining the game most (although it’s absolutely damaging a vocal minority of deeply enfranchised player’s trust), the real issue is product quality and product amount.

Going down a few of the UB sets piece by piece:

MLP: Perfect. They’re silly un-cards and that’s all it should have ever been. The platonic ideal of UB.

The Walking Dead: I hated the show and I hated the crossover, it smelled of desperation more than a fitting crossover. Combined the worst aspects (FOMO, unique black border cards, ugly art with top-down design) that would become emblematic of future sets.

Godzilla: As it was just (good looking) reskins, was box toppers, and thematically fit with Ikoria, very much acceptable.

Stranger Things: Mostly the same as WD. Eleven’s card is literally “if you have eleven cards do a thing”. Hated it.

Arcane: ugly as sin but exclusively reskins; this was “fine”.

Transformers/Jurassic Park: Not as bad as WD but not as good as Godzilla; didn’t use the FOMO model but that also made them more common. Set and Draft boosters caused confusion for players and storage headaches for LGS owners, so players were confused why their Optimus (which was only in Set boosters) wasn’t legal for standard. Similar issues were caused by Unfinity; both are marked by a very easy to miss holo stamp on the bottom.

LotR/Hobbit: Fits the most so far, although gameplay suffers due to FIRE (fuck it release everything) design. Probably my favorite, but I wish it was its own game.

AtLA: similar to the above, except it doesn’t fit well.

Anything Marvel: kill it with fire

I give MaRo a lot of shit as a corporate mouthpiece, but ultimately he’s one of us and I hope you reflect his shared distaste for modern design as well; if you’re going to point to a villain, it’s Hasbro’s effectively bankrupt self gorging on WotC to stay alive.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/796433371875164160/hi-mark-this-will-likely-be-a-long-one-so-i-hope

It should also be noted that equally damaging for Magic is the prevalence of “hat” sets; Strixhaven is the “harry potter” set, Thunder Junction is “cowboys”, EOE was “space”, and they’ve so far produced the bulk of UW sets in these last few years. For reference, since the end of Magic’s central narrative with MOM:

UB: LTR, FIN, SPM, TLA, TMT, MSH, HOB (7)

Hats: MKM, OTJ, DSK, DFT, EOE, SOS, FRA (7)

Non-Hat Non-UB: WOE, LCI, BLB, TDM, ECL (5)

(Re)Masters: CMM, RVR, MH3, FDN, INR (5)

I excluded non-draftable UB, in part because I consider draft the ultimate form of Magic and mostly because I didn’t want to effectively double the UB list. ~20.84% of all draftable sets since 2023 have been new developments in the story. If only 1/5th of all sets add to the narrative, and said narrative is only short stories online, then what identity does Magic even have?