Upcoming Changes

Converted Mana Cost is now going to become Mana Value, as I saw via Forsythe's Twitter.

Which...ugh. Because from what I can tell, it appears that they just announced the change but without any reason for said change.

And honestly, I am tired of changes made 'because reasons'. I see it all the time in design interfaces, with 'upgrades' being done, frequently without any concern for or justification to the end user. We're always being told how exciting the changes are, but almost never how those changes benefit us. Blogger has done this, Gmail has done this, it goes on and on and on. 

Magic is no different, especially lately: For example, there have been a lot more changes to the visual design of cards over the past few years than there ever was, and often they aren't discussed. These aren't automatically bad but are they good?

Remember when people often forgot that Questing Beast wasn't legendary, and WotC said: Well we thought the boarder would help make that clear! But we made an error (because it really doesn't convey as much information as they presumed it would.)

Now, it may be part of how I first saw the information: Twitter is known for a lot of things, being a desert of nuance possibly in the top five.

Nevertheless, putting it out there that way just has me insisting: OK, you made this change, WHY? What benefit does it give to the end user?

Do I think it's bad? Not inherently, but it would be nice if they talked about why it was good. Told us why it helped us, or helped them make a better game for us. 

Instead we just get a stupid meme and so OF COURSE you have some players responding badly. Nobody understands why this change is made! And yes, people will complain anyway, no matter what they do, but putting it out there like that feels more funny-asshole than funny-clever. 

Is it a big deal? Quite probably not, but I'm certainly not going to argue with people who think this is an unnecessary change that is a pain in the ass, because there isn't anything to justify why making this change helps make the game better.