Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling • Hacker News Board

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#321

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

gpderetta wrote: post #283

johnnyanmac wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not even exist without such a model, on the other hand. Which may cause many other things to cease as well or never expand to mainstream-ish reception.

It might be slowly moving to that model: with precon decks, challenger decks and secret lairs, WotC is selling a lot of non-randomized stuff. They even split for a while draft boosters from collector boosters (and then reversed the decision when nobody was buying the draft boosters and risked killing the format).

They have non-randomized offers, but the vast majority of their stuff can only be obtained randomly (or secondhand).

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#322

Post by jstarfish » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #301

freilanzer wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone thinking about getting into Pen and Paper games, I'm surprised to read all this. What are the alternatives?

Some interesting ones: - Blades in the Dark: Players are members of a thieves guild. Focus on pulling off heists, creative ways of solving problems, and providing a spectrum of outcomes (e.g. "success but with consequences" or "failure but without consequences" instead of a binary pass and fail). - Heart: Sort of a psychedelic cosmic horror take on underground adventuring. Has an interesting level up system where at…

> Has an interesting level up system where at the end of each session you tell the DM something you want to have the chance to accomplish in the next session in order to gain a level.

Ugh, I play games to get away from sprint planning...

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#323

Post by solardev » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #230

solardev wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you buy singles? (Not trying to be snarky. Just started playing a few months ago and that seems to be the best way to make decks without gambling. What's the point of buying packs?)

If you are exclusively buying singles that screams to me you are just powergaming and netdecking your decks instead of actually figuring out the game and playing it. Sure you can get a better deal that way - meaning a higher win rate deck while spending less money, but a lot of the fun of MtG is (or at least was when I played) the discovery of new cards in the set, trading cards with your gaming group(s), and trying…

I actually just enjoy building decks that are interesting in some way, and singles let me do that without going bankrupt.

I don't know what netdecking is (buying singles to make someone else's posted deck? no fun in that). I don't play competitively and I don't care about the meta or anything, I just have the most fun arranging decks to fit some purpose without having to gamble.

For what it's worth, the decks I've built weren't really meant to win (they rarely do), but to explore some aspect of Magic I felt interesting. An example one is a Mindflayers copy deck that just spawns a bunch of mind flayers and copies them and takes over enemy creatures one at a time. It almost never works (it's easy to counter and has a slow ramp), but in the rare instances it succeeds, it's fun to watch. I only built that deck because I was really enjoying Baldur's Gate 3.

I only started playing Magic a few months ago, and the pay to win aspect had zero appeal to me. I have no interest in collecting and selling cardboard cards, I just want to design fun new decks and experiment with them. Singles and proxies make that possible.

People who play Magic the random gamble way are IMO playing a different game. That's fine, just not what I'm into :)

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#324

Post by mcv » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #319

axus wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a true D&D player would rules-lawyer the decade definition like that.

Sounds like a rollplayer, not a roleplayer.

I'm actually not a D&D player; I'm currently involved in Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark and Pathfinder 2. Despite that, I don't consider it very controversial to count a decade as 10 years.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#325

Post by gpderetta » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #318

gpderetta wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might actually be more accepted in competitive EDH (and pretty much required) as most people can't be expected mortgage their homes to buy a deck full of expensive reserve list cards[1] :D. It helps that cEDH is not a sanctioned format. [1] cEDH is sometimes called singleton multiplayer vintage for a reason.

I would not be shocked, but I know nothing about cEDH while I have at least some acquaintance with EDH. Also talking about singleton vintage is a bit funny when vintage is the only format with a restricted list (and thus in a way the original format with singleton restriction).

yes, arguably vintage is singleton vintage :D

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#326

Post by ZiiS » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #277

ZiiS wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pathfinder is DnD but better; most others focus on different settings so it depends on your interests I have always liked Cyberpunk 2020.

In my experience (which is limited to Pathfinder 2e without any extensions) Pathfinder is by far inferior to D&D 5e. The classes _are_ more interesting, but you pretty much have to maximise your character's potential if you want to keep the game going or you just have to be willing to re-roll often and let characters die and just abandon quests. i.e. it is not good for heroic fantasy. Then again Pathfinder isn't grit…

Yes; rulesets and even settings are not the most important thing and are highly subjective. It is hard to make recommendations. I would expect a GM to scale difficulty to prevent characters dying too much (at least if they don't want to) with any system. But I can see that Pathfinder dose incentivize min-maxing long lived characters which will not be everyone's cup of tea. Similarly the combat system is fairly terrible in Cyberpunk 2020 but never stopped me enjoying it.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#327

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #264

drxzcl wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the naive part is focussing on player options. I understand that groups generally have one DM and 4 players, do if you include player options you might sell 5 books instead of one. But that's the shallow, cash-in-now-fuck-next-decade mentality. Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade. The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns and running…

> Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade. Lost Mines of Phandelver, the adventure from the intro box, is pretty good (except when it switches to "every room has a monster" later on). It's very big for an intro adventure and there's tons of stuff in it. But it's quite possible that it's the only good one they made.

[deleted]

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#328

Post by gigaflop » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #149

THENATHE wrote: post #48

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different…

There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. I think that anyone who wants to “have cards that have relative value” are investors, whether they realize it or not. Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves (I recall a recent Reddit post where the user was trying to collect every single Magic card that depicted an owl in any way). But if your concern is about the monetary…

I enjoy having high-value cards in my collection, but the best way to show them off is in a deck that uses them well. I'm not throwing my Surge Foil copy of The One Ring in a random Commander deck.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#329

Post by gigaflop » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 5:45 PM UTC

gymbeaux wrote: post #56

THENATHE wrote: post #48

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different…

My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs. Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they ant…

I dropped $200 on Dr Malcolm and some others for the Locust God promo. I'm very happy with it all, and now get to build an Egglord deck with Jeff Goldblum's face on it.

And, if you've only experienced a few set releases, price swings will seem weird. Keep in mind that more boxes will be opened for a while, thus making more copies of coveted things available. It's a different story when a set goes out of print.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#330

Post by morgango » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

flerchin wrote: post #310

Hasbro laid off 1100, of which 20 are at WoTC. But how many folks are at WoTC? Are those 20 involved in the actual money printer they have with WoTC?

Very astute observation.

It is sometimes worth it to take people who are unhappy in their job and/or not performing well and give them a package when they are available. I would guess there are 20 of these people at any company of that size, not just WOTC.