Interstingly he would like to make a draw card default to a "target player" instead of simple card advantage - knowning the epic saga of my quest to get a straight answer on why Illusions breaks all the other stack rules and it ended up being based on "targeting" as an action and the great difficulty of anyone teaching that rule as coherent and reproducible I of course had an opinion, but primarily my opinion is because I'm beginning to see how limited their expectation of learning types, styles and enviroments is. The all presuppose either supportive, information rich environments with expert guides or compeltely even playing fields that ignore their own design psychotypes as teachers - if an expert Spike is teaching a newb Vorthos Johnny you are not set up for "joy of discovery".
Also they undersestimate the learning retention caused by experiential functions and prioritize visual processing and analytic inputs for what they call "crystallization" but what is actually something more accurately labled "comprehension of the learning objective", but I guess the real life learning term isn't as sexy or mysterious.
The primary problem with Mark's design is that the learning objective for the "target" vocabulary and strategy offers no real game benefit to the learner and is a learning objective covered in many other areas of the game, but by not recognizing kinetic experiencial learning he is actively undermining a far more intrinsic value learning objective - "recognizing and applying card advantage" which is what draw cards do at a basic level.
So I responded - this is the response on the message boards - where I somewhat unadvisably use my real photo.
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While the concept of "crystallization" is an interesting one and apparent from a designer's standpoint in terms of relevatory gameplay, I disagree with the concept of it being a thing that is helpful or a learning tool.
Learning Environments aren't going to provide the positive experience of "target" first;
There are several assumptions about the learning environment for a new player involved in the idea. Many of them are presupposing a non existant learning environment.
What's being proposed is taking a basic card that actually encapuslates something simple and puts the learner on an equivalent field with a more expert player ( in this case providing card advantage) changing it to allow complexity to creep in at a point that offers little value for the learning player but lots of advantage to the expert player to exploit the card that formerly helped the learner while introducing an relevant complex concept at a kinectic learning level.
Changing the card into one where the card avantage experience simply becomes another opportunity to lose the advantage ( redirects and other exploits) will mean the learning player will not experience the card advantage and only learn the exploitation of things that can interfere with "target" the vocabulary word.
This destabilizes a real learning experience that DOES have positive value
Learning players have entirely too many points of learning that are "having your cards used against you" and not so many " hey this helps " during the very steep learning curve - simple card advantage is one of the very, very few cards that are advantageous to new players that don't get dissed by experience players at more advance stages of play later (life gain artifacts are specifically coming to mind here). So you are also changing a basic experience of a core play strategy that is highly valued at later points in expert play.
In order for it to be a "joy of discovery"moment it would have to be something the new player would discover and use - but the reality is that most players do not learn with other players at exactly their level - people are much more likely to learn from either playing people who are better than them and don't teach or don't know all of the permutations of interactions or they learn because they keep going to the local store. They will not learn the joys of targeting card draw by using it against an opponent, they will learn it by having an opponent steal their card advantage. No positive learner reinforcement for card advantage and a new negative reinforcement while learning to play.
There are very few scenarios where forcing an opponent to draw helps a new player. Actually I can't think of any that don't help the opponent first.
As someone who almost stopped playing in competition because of Target I'm getting a kick . . .
Target also specifically is FAR more complicated when interacting as the trigger for effects in Illusions. The difficulty of learning or understanding why the heck illusions disappeared even though cards didn't have to resolve if they affected the illusions almost convinced me that I was too dumb to ever play Magic competitively.
Because it works counterintuitively with the understanding of the stack ( target triggers float to the top of the stack and stay there to resolve first regardless of what else goes on the stack) there is no properly instructonally designed method to teach complex rules interactions anywhere in the world of Magic leaving a learning player to hunt all over the internet to try to understand. Opposing players and Judges below level 2 seem to really have difficulty explaining it at all. It wasn't until I read the FAQ for Ice Cage that I realized what was happening with Illusions and that the target trigger didn't behave the way other effects and triggers did.
I'm fairly sure my understanding while thorough and referenced is still incomplete. I keep a competitiors journal so I can specifically keep a record of explanations and my personal understanding of the rules - ironically it also keeps track of my learning curve and all of the various misinterpretations and hoops I have to jump through in order to get clear, easy to understand information to help me play. There are three seperate entries on target in relation to response and triggers -
The learning value of "Vanilla" Strategy vs yet another "vocabulary" experience:
Card advantage is something you can play and experience that allows you to devlop and understand the value of more complex cards later. Divination - "draw two cards" allows the new player to experience the positive value of card advantage before being able to intentionally exploit it strategically in deckbuilding - it creates a positive sense memory of being able to have more options when you had none or access cards with synergy earlier than you expected giving you a game advanatage - when you are better at the overall game this creates an additive learning experience when you can start seeing the advantage of Desperate Ravings of Faithless looting because trading "dead" cards for card advantage is the next most sophisticated application of card advantage.
In instructional design that would be additive skill building through kinetic learning. Not every learner is going to approach this the way Mark has described. In fact what he sees as a learning advantage I see as a specific learning demotivator for many just above basic but not yet good players. They will assume this is another "hidden rule" that you can't simply understand or read about when their card is yet another card that doesn't behave in a way that works for them.
Like vanilla creatures being a core idea to convey the game, some "vanilla" spells are needed not to demoralize a learning player that also create an experience of the positives of strategic play before the learning player fully understands them.
Card Advantage and Tempo are two deckbuilding basics but by creating complexity unecessarily and giving an opposing player the opportunity to interfere with anything other than a counter spell you are interrupting the more kinetic learning experience and making it suddenly unstable and moreover a negative experience that can't be built from.
One of the things that creates the majority of former-Magic-Players is the fact that when they are playing the people they are playing against are not just better than them with better decks, but they also get crushed regularly. You lose a lot in Magic when you are learning, and the people whom you play against at FNM are not looking out for your crystallization moment. You will just learn yet another opportunity for not being able to execute your strategy and be sideswiped by yet ANOTHER set of interactions that make you feel unknowing or incompetent. Cards like Divination and Think Twice are some of the cards that mitigate that experience in play - giving them a point of interruption creates value for "cool vocabulary learning " over "opportunity to actually play, succeed and learn from a positive experience".
Why it's unecessary to add complexity here:
Plenty of other cards exist for crystalization, as described in the article Bonds of Faith was my moment for that. There is also plenty of oppotuniy to learn "target" in magic without adding it here and in and of itself it's one of the easier concepts so it doesn't need to be added at this level. The idea of a targeted draw card is fine but not as a default. There really needs to be vanilla strategic spell cards or learning Magic simply becomes a gauntlet that only one type of homogenous learning style will be able to particpate in. I'm impressed with how much the designers think about people learning to play but they aren't really applying learning theory so the execution is really haphazard.
Changing the default would be a mistake and reduce real learning opportunity. Specialized uncommon in an expert expanision to feed multiplayer is fine.
Learning Environments aren't going to provide the positive experience of "target" first;
There are several assumptions about the learning environment for a new player involved in the idea. Many of them are presupposing a non existant learning environment.
What's being proposed is taking a basic card that actually encapuslates something simple and puts the learner on an equivalent field with a more expert player ( in this case providing card advantage) changing it to allow complexity to creep in at a point that offers little value for the learning player but lots of advantage to the expert player to exploit the card that formerly helped the learner while introducing an relevant complex concept at a kinectic learning level.
Changing the card into one where the card avantage experience simply becomes another opportunity to lose the advantage ( redirects and other exploits) will mean the learning player will not experience the card advantage and only learn the exploitation of things that can interfere with "target" the vocabulary word.
This destabilizes a real learning experience that DOES have positive value
Learning players have entirely too many points of learning that are "having your cards used against you" and not so many " hey this helps " during the very steep learning curve - simple card advantage is one of the very, very few cards that are advantageous to new players that don't get dissed by experience players at more advance stages of play later (life gain artifacts are specifically coming to mind here). So you are also changing a basic experience of a core play strategy that is highly valued at later points in expert play.
In order for it to be a "joy of discovery"moment it would have to be something the new player would discover and use - but the reality is that most players do not learn with other players at exactly their level - people are much more likely to learn from either playing people who are better than them and don't teach or don't know all of the permutations of interactions or they learn because they keep going to the local store. They will not learn the joys of targeting card draw by using it against an opponent, they will learn it by having an opponent steal their card advantage. No positive learner reinforcement for card advantage and a new negative reinforcement while learning to play.
There are very few scenarios where forcing an opponent to draw helps a new player. Actually I can't think of any that don't help the opponent first.
As someone who almost stopped playing in competition because of Target I'm getting a kick . . .
Target also specifically is FAR more complicated when interacting as the trigger for effects in Illusions. The difficulty of learning or understanding why the heck illusions disappeared even though cards didn't have to resolve if they affected the illusions almost convinced me that I was too dumb to ever play Magic competitively.
Because it works counterintuitively with the understanding of the stack ( target triggers float to the top of the stack and stay there to resolve first regardless of what else goes on the stack) there is no properly instructonally designed method to teach complex rules interactions anywhere in the world of Magic leaving a learning player to hunt all over the internet to try to understand. Opposing players and Judges below level 2 seem to really have difficulty explaining it at all. It wasn't until I read the FAQ for Ice Cage that I realized what was happening with Illusions and that the target trigger didn't behave the way other effects and triggers did.
I'm fairly sure my understanding while thorough and referenced is still incomplete. I keep a competitiors journal so I can specifically keep a record of explanations and my personal understanding of the rules - ironically it also keeps track of my learning curve and all of the various misinterpretations and hoops I have to jump through in order to get clear, easy to understand information to help me play. There are three seperate entries on target in relation to response and triggers -
The learning value of "Vanilla" Strategy vs yet another "vocabulary" experience:
Card advantage is something you can play and experience that allows you to devlop and understand the value of more complex cards later. Divination - "draw two cards" allows the new player to experience the positive value of card advantage before being able to intentionally exploit it strategically in deckbuilding - it creates a positive sense memory of being able to have more options when you had none or access cards with synergy earlier than you expected giving you a game advanatage - when you are better at the overall game this creates an additive learning experience when you can start seeing the advantage of Desperate Ravings of Faithless looting because trading "dead" cards for card advantage is the next most sophisticated application of card advantage.
In instructional design that would be additive skill building through kinetic learning. Not every learner is going to approach this the way Mark has described. In fact what he sees as a learning advantage I see as a specific learning demotivator for many just above basic but not yet good players. They will assume this is another "hidden rule" that you can't simply understand or read about when their card is yet another card that doesn't behave in a way that works for them.
Like vanilla creatures being a core idea to convey the game, some "vanilla" spells are needed not to demoralize a learning player that also create an experience of the positives of strategic play before the learning player fully understands them.
Card Advantage and Tempo are two deckbuilding basics but by creating complexity unecessarily and giving an opposing player the opportunity to interfere with anything other than a counter spell you are interrupting the more kinetic learning experience and making it suddenly unstable and moreover a negative experience that can't be built from.
One of the things that creates the majority of former-Magic-Players is the fact that when they are playing the people they are playing against are not just better than them with better decks, but they also get crushed regularly. You lose a lot in Magic when you are learning, and the people whom you play against at FNM are not looking out for your crystallization moment. You will just learn yet another opportunity for not being able to execute your strategy and be sideswiped by yet ANOTHER set of interactions that make you feel unknowing or incompetent. Cards like Divination and Think Twice are some of the cards that mitigate that experience in play - giving them a point of interruption creates value for "cool vocabulary learning " over "opportunity to actually play, succeed and learn from a positive experience".
Why it's unecessary to add complexity here:
Plenty of other cards exist for crystalization, as described in the article Bonds of Faith was my moment for that. There is also plenty of oppotuniy to learn "target" in magic without adding it here and in and of itself it's one of the easier concepts so it doesn't need to be added at this level. The idea of a targeted draw card is fine but not as a default. There really needs to be vanilla strategic spell cards or learning Magic simply becomes a gauntlet that only one type of homogenous learning style will be able to particpate in. I'm impressed with how much the designers think about people learning to play but they aren't really applying learning theory so the execution is really haphazard.
Changing the default would be a mistake and reduce real learning opportunity. Specialized uncommon in an expert expanision to feed multiplayer is fine.
