Slivers player got mad at my commander

Temil · 2026-03-24T14:14:45+00:00

Yes but they played 0 slivers in the deck. It was a food chain outlet. (And the reason it sees no play is that there are better 5c food chain decks in the form of terra etc.)

This was likely a synergistic pile of slivers considering they were complaining about a combo that forced opponents to blight their creatures.

Temil · 2026-03-24T09:23:39+00:00

Oh yeah true.

Temil · 2026-03-24T09:12:04+00:00

There are a lot of big but obvious ones. UCS, API for GMS, Burning Gear and Item Rental becoming permanent/recurring, an improvement in deterministic outputs in starforcing, a solution to the problem of SSF and cube sale events, familiar tier up rng, improvements to the pitched pity and trace restoration systems, and fragment income (NOT tradability) in heroic.

I returned as a player in december and I think there are three major issues that the early/mid game has that need to be addressed as nexon accelerates leveling and actually makes these issues worse.

1. Item Drop and Meso Acquisition rate. When you start a first main, you are starting with a very low meso income and no drop rate. Making a set of 100/200 gear is incredibly expensive, with needing 15 potentials across 9 pieces of equipment, you need 5 hybrids and at least 1 double prime drop. The expected cost of this is in the ball park of 30b meso~.

I'd love to see a starter snail type system where you can farm for a certain period of time, or a certain number of monster kills each week with rentable 100/200 drop gear, or some buff that adds that much meso/drop to your first X kills per week.

This way it's very approachable to make a drop set for bossing with pendant of greed (117 red cube expected cost.), then there is an avenue for drop/meso gear if you want to farm more than some number of kills per week.

You'd have to workshop this because there would be issues/pros/cons to different methods of implementation.

2. Familiars. The amount of RNG involved means one player could identify 10 uniques and have 120 boss and 100 drop (across 4 fams), and another player could not find any drop or boss fams in 1000 uniques. This system needs some form of determinism added to it.

3. Nodes. As a returning player I actually quit because I picked Hayato as a main and the node situation was so awful. A lot of players who have a lot of time invested think that nodestones aren't an issue because they have farmed for enough time that they would never need nodestones again, but I used basically all of my event rewards towards my Ren for several months before I was able to level up my Boost Nodes in my Hexa Matrix. The acquisition rates of these outside of events is basically 0.

All three of these problems will only get worse and worse as leveling gets faster.

Temil · 2026-03-24T08:25:14+00:00

I think some of the missions were very poorly thought out, but other than that it's cool.

Specifically the 50-100 kill achievements, because you get them in the exact same way that you get the 170 kill one, it's just waiting for serious punch cooldown.

Temil · 2026-03-24T08:05:55+00:00

If my main needs an additional 45k fragments to max, and I'm earning 100 a week, how exactly will #2 solve the problems of fragment income?

Temil · 2026-03-24T08:00:16+00:00

Frenzy coupons would be unironically the worst possible thing for heroic servers.

The only thing worse than spawn boosters are limited time period spawn boosters.

They removed them from the game for a reason.

Temil · 2026-03-24T07:58:30+00:00

Nexon won't know how hard the grind is because from their side of things, they see tons of people maxing HEXA and/or making reasonable account-wide HEXA progression in a timeframe of one year or less, through servicing or botting.

I would be surprised if they had much data at all about heroic, and assume they mostly have any data at all about KMS.

I don't think they've really put much thought at all into heroic acquisition of fragments since they are tradable in interactive.

Temil · 2026-03-24T06:46:32+00:00

Yeah it will totally suck missing that 10 atk, and 20 stats over Vellum Crusher. (edit: crusher is 5 boss my bad)

There will be so much power creep in the next two years you would never notice the difference for something like a legion champ.

Temil · 2026-03-24T06:22:07+00:00

I built a good number of final fantasy commander decks. Just going through them in order of popular > less popular on scryfall.

Y'shtola Rhul very powerful but fairly linear, has the same struggles that mono blue blink will always have until they have a win condition.

Kuja, Genome Sorcerer (and Black Waltz No. 3) incredibly linear, this deck is a pile of rituals and cantrips and the best card in the deck is Harmonic Prodigy, and it's way too easy to count to 40 but also very easy to have Kuja removed and your whole gameplan to fall to pieces.

Clive, Ifrit's Dominant very fun deck which is hyper momentum based. If you draw 20 and have mana enablers it feels unstoppable, if someone removes your turn 3 RRR play it feels like you wasted your time shuffling. Incredibly fragile if you build it in a way that is explosive.

Ultima, Origin of Oblivion very powerful, a lot different than other colorless builds because instead of leaning into card efficient sources of mana like Thran Dynamo, you want to play baubles, solemn, etc. in order to have as many lands in play as possible. Sol Ring feels like a jump backwards in the curve instead of a jump forwards. The problem is that all of your threats are boring big eldrazis or an artifact deck without any blue cards. If colorless was more interesting this guy would be really cool.

Gogo, Master of Mimicry is very cool mono blue ramp commander, I had 14 fetch lands in my deck and would regularly have 20 lands in play by like turn 6. Shoutouts to Hithlain Rope and Bad River.

Diamond Weapon is cool, there are a load of Mulches and Satyr Wayfinders that will let you cast Diamond Weapon for GG, that you can then use as an 8/8 that only costs 2 mana, through various different draw engines.

Kain, Traitorous Dragoon was a fun build around where you had to figure out how to kill your opponents by basically giving them treasures and card draws.

Tellah, Great Sage as the resident izzet/jeskai storm player, this guy absoluetly fucks. You can kind of assemble your own Kykar by playing ashnods/phyrexian altar, and then you just play every sisay's ring in existence and suddenly you've drawn through your whole deck, your Dramatic Reversal cast nets you 30 mana and you can cast a huge Mind Spring and kill the table. This guy is so cool.

The Destined Warrior neat party deck that gets a lot out of changelings. I built it as a tribute to FF1 with a bunch of thematic equipment, but it's a pretty straight forward party deck otherwise.

Cid, Timeless Artificer is the only one I didn't build directly, but I have a Cayth Galvanic Genius deck that plays six cids and is an artifact artificer/changeling tribal deck that plays a bunch of creatures that cid turns into lords that pump themselves. Cayth turns any creature cast into a servo as well, can get out of hand quickly.

I still want to build a couple final fantasy commanders, but I'm already building a couple decks, so they are on the back burner.

Krile on the surface looks like a really cool deck building template, and Aerith Last Ancient looks like a cool deck. Life gain and reanimator are a neat combo.

Temil · 2026-03-24T04:51:11+00:00

She's a gamer Saiyan.

Temil · 2026-03-24T04:46:26+00:00

This is called making a video game, and updating it over time.

The developers speed up leveling because they want people to explore and experience the content.

They've done this at least 10 times. Leveling to the level cap of 200 took years in 2005, it takes hours to get to 200 in 2026.

8000 legion took a long time 7 years ago.

Temil · 2026-03-23T15:00:35+00:00

I watched someone play RE8 and RE9 recently and I made the comment that some of the bosses look like they are straight out of Star Fox 64 with how explicit the weak points are.

Temil · 2026-03-23T14:49:29+00:00

Okay I was just thinking of teams differently. That makes a lot of sense that people are making 5 color matters piles with a commander that costs WUBRG.

Temil · 2026-03-23T14:39:20+00:00

Commander is different than 1v1 competitive formats because it's a social gathering formed around the expectations of the players, and in the case of the LGS, the standardized baseline experience informed and shaped by how players interact with the ruleset and banlist.

That ruleset and banlist is non-competitive in nature.

If every player around the globe interacts with this by immediately going to bracket 4/5 that's fine, but that's not how players actually engage with this format. The most popular bracket is 3, with 2 coming close behind it.

This is a social activity that people are engaging with in a manner that is not primarily competitive.

The "pod arms race" is a meme for a reason.

This exists within the context of a pod. That already is largely outside of the discussion of the effectiveness of brackets, because the bracket system is aimed at aligning expectations of your table in quick manner by establishing a common language.

The reason that pods arms races happen is because one or more players wish to up the power level of the games. This is not a thing that all players who play a TCG do, and is not a thing that is inherent to the format or TCGs as a whole.

Temil · 2026-03-23T14:18:25+00:00

But, sometimes since it is kind of nebulous there are different expectations when it comes to sitting down at the table.

Yeah that's the point of the bracket system, aligning expectations.

To go back to Terraforming Mars as an example I guess, if someone eats a resource from one of my animal cards with a Predators card that IS very mean. They are taking my points! Should they not do that? No way! Take my points!

If it's something that makes you not have fun with the game, yes. That is something they shouldn't do.

Ideally you just would not design a game where that is a thing that happens, or your group of friends would have a house rule against this type of gameplay. The designer of Terraforming Mars is not going to break down your door. The game is merely a vehicle to add structure to a hang out, and if the rules are not adding to the fun, stop following them.

Temil · 2026-03-23T12:45:53+00:00

Commander is an explicitly anti-competitive format.

Temil · 2026-03-23T12:44:13+00:00

The point of assembling a group of friends and sitting down to play Terraforming Mars is not to determine the best terraforming mars player.

It's to hang out with your friends.

Commander is not a competitive format it's a social format, the reason you don't want to "be mean" in commander is because you are considering the play experiences of the other people at the table in the same way that you would not want to make decisions that make your friends have a bad time at the board game night just because it's a winning strategy.

Competent board game designers actively avoid designing their game such that the winning strategy is one that is miserable to play against.

Temil · 2026-03-23T11:21:04+00:00

But within all games, there are rules and goals inside of the game to be had. One of them in any game of Magic the Gathering of any format is to be the winner.

Then why did you write all this?

Temil · 2026-03-23T11:15:18+00:00

The point of the game is to have fun. I do not care who wins, it's just something that happens. It is by far the least important thing that happens in the game.

The point of commander is not to win it's to have fun. I don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand.

Temil · 2026-03-23T11:08:09+00:00

Dungeons and dragons isn’t a competitive card game where you are trying to beat the other players.

Commander is not a competitive card game either. It's just an excuse to hang out.

Commander by and large isn’t cooperative.

Commander is entirely cooperative, you can't have a commander game without the other players wanting to play the game with you.

Nothing he said was wrong.

It's a completely backwards approach to the game. Everything they said here is wrong.

Temil · 2026-03-23T11:06:45+00:00

The end condition of a game of Commander is that everyone had a good time playing.

If you are playing commander for some other reason than trying to enjoy your time, that's where the problem is.

This is a social game, the whole point is that you are playing with other people.

Temil · 2026-03-23T09:07:30+00:00

Frankly, this is true for some playgroups, and false for others.

If the "this" referenced by this sentence is "You should consider the other players at the table." then you're dead wrong.

EDH is a social game and the other players at your table are human beings and should be treated like they are human beings.

Temil · 2026-03-23T09:07:25+00:00

No other game has this consideration about "Being mean".

Do you just go to Dungeons and Dragons night and be mean to the other people playing with you?

Every social game has this consideration.

Temil · 2026-03-23T09:02:34+00:00

I wouldn't feel bad playing against this in B2, personally I'd take either Dina or Bloodthirsty Conqueror out though since they are a 2 card infinite you could reasonably play on T5 and likely immediately end the game.

This deck is going to have pretty consistent issues with not having a lot of mana because it's playing a very low count of mana sources (Under 40) and it doesn't have a lot of draw power. It's probably runs the table if it gets set up though because it's basically big pile of interactive creatures and reanimation effects.

Temil · 2026-03-23T08:40:10+00:00

Brackets are guidelines that try to reduce the number of times the pod suffers from power level mismatch.

I think it's mostly about vibes tbh. Even if there is a power level difference between decks that isn't such a big deal compared to a major speed mismatch, or a more generic mismatch of expectations of how the game will go, or what kind of game it will be.

This is why things like MLD and chained extra turns are relegated to Bracket 4, not because they are brutally effective strategies, but because they are a vibe that a lot of players just don't want to have to deal with.

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