It is only because of the setup of the game. I hope in the future the Devs take on a more long-term setup that allows for almost no need for power creep, like Magic the Gathering card game where they have their “standard format” that only allows cards from the most recent year to be played. For PvP the Devs could do something similar where they only allow monsters released in the last 12-18 months to be used then a select group of other monsters. We’d also get a free legendary every few months that can forever be used in PvE but will only be allowed in PvP for the next 12-18 months and never again. These free legendaries can be designed to encourage certain metas.
I play Magic The Gathering quite a lot and I can tell you that at the moment that game has the very same issue with power creep as NM, and for the very same reason: money.
MTG doesn’t need any insane over-the-top cards just like NM doesn’t need insane over-the-top monsters, but the more overpowered the new cards are the more boosters boxers the new set will sell. Kind of like gems and eggs.
They managed to destroy 25 years of power creep managment in 2-3 years of greediness.
I’ve heard this in the MTG community for 25 years, yet the power level is still less than it was 15 years ago. They have had a very bad year for standard and other formats with a few broken cards/combos but that was just a design failure and not a failure with the setup of their different formats.
Modern is still a 4-turn format and is an ever-changing meta, Vintage/Legacy are getting small meta changing things and struggling more only because of card availability (they are always doomed to fail - only a few will spend $10,000+ to get into a format), Draft is always brilliant fun, Standard has its ups and downs as it always has and Commander is booming (power level here increasing a little but it’s the new big format they’re trying to get a handle on - looks like their biggest focus with this next year).
How long have you played MTG for? I ask because seriously every year people are saying there is power creep or the game is doomed and yet it’s not really been happening at all. They had a few bad periods in the past with boring archetypes in standard but other than that things have been on the rise and with the release of MTG Arena their revenue has skyrocketed. As for power creep the spells are weaker than they were in the past and creatures are stronger, in an attempt to balance them better (compared to the very early days of MTG). They now make fewer weak creatures (recent years), but that’s mainly to make drafting more fun - people don’t have to use vanilla creatures so much.
I mean I wasn’t even counting the early years of the game. They had no idea of what they were doing and it’s ok.
Talking recent years though Modern Horizons was a major increase in power for modern. I don’t mind it since I feel like that was the point, even though they went a little too far with it and had to ban Hogaak.
Commander also I don’t count since it’s a casual format. I play it and most of the time we decide how powerful we want a game to be before starting it, and pick a deck accordingly. Power creep isn’t really a problem in formats like commander.
Standard is where the game is having issues recently. Every set has more powerful cards than the one prior simply because otherwise people would just keep on buying the last one.
I mean Throne of Eldraine’s standard saw 4 bannings. 4 bannings in standard is insane! And I think it only happened twice in the past: during Darksteel (2004) and Urza’s Saga (1998). I go by what I remember from YouTube videos though, so I might be wrong.
Plus let’s not forget about the Eldrazi fiasco a couple of years ago: they were so powerful that they had to be banned in both standard and modern, and maybe even legacy? I’m not sure about legacy though honestly.
tl;dr - The only reason MTG feels healthy from outside is because they keep on making degenerate stuff and then ban them after the set sold enough. Kind of like they do for NM and nerfs.
Uh and I forgot how long I’ve been playing actually. Last year I finally found an actual playgroup so I’ve been playing quite a lot since then, but before that I’ve been playing online from time to time and following the game for honestly I don’t know how long.
Frankly I’m shocked that Yuki’s SS hasn’t been brought up yet… it’s an insanely volatile move to say the least. Obviously the biggest problem would be the prevalence of poison, as well as often recurring quick purifiers like centaureon, dracorosa and angelion. Other obvious counters include pullback/sendback cannibalize/backstab. It can be a heartbreaking moment for sure, giving up your awakened myth only to swiftly be met with a monster that can erase everything she built up. It won’t be easy to be prepared to stuff out those counters; centaur’s unstoppable, draco and angel can’t be stunned and are difficult to kill in time, and if bane or blacktitan decide to show their mugs, there’s just nothing you can do about it. You just can’t build to counter purify the same way as certain archetypes, because it’s not even really an archetype at all.
As for the reward… if your opponent fails to procure one of the counters he needs to wake that poor soul back up? Well, the entire match will become a permanent 3v4. That’s simply nuts. Typical disruption monsters do a fine job of sticking in shells and boxes to mess up your chemistry, but imagine a shell that never goes away, and can’t even salve the wound with some acceleration. A massive reward for a massive risk. Sadly… given the way the meta is built nowadays, the risk just seems too unreasonable. You just have to hope and pray that your opponent doesn’t have any S+ tier mons up their sleeve.
Haven’t even gotten into the caveats of building around it… first off, no flocco or static for obvious reasons. Nothing like megabomb or hellfire mortar that hits all 4 targets. And of course no other sleep monsters. Seems like yuki took the mindset of solo a step further and expanded it to an archetype as well as an element. Makes sense, preventing other sleep monsters from abusing it even further. Honestly as long as you build around her to a reasonable degree she’s not too strict… it’s just that her payoff likely isn’t gonna be enough.
Devs did have the right idea being so strict, I think it would’ve been life saving a year ago before the s+ brigade showed up. The restrictions aren’t what breaks her though… it’s the sheer amount of counters she’s faced with right out the gate. She’s essentially how leogeist would’ve ended up if he’d come after chrono killer’s inception.
I think it’s very easy to focus in on these particular failures. They had a terribly bad year this year for bannings so that also makes it come to mind more. In reality they had roughly 4-5 bad years in their past 25+ years, which is pretty good going. Mistakes are almost unavoidable too, whether you have a standard format or just an eternal one.
The main thing is a rotating standard format is a great setup for giving much less need for power creep. Unless NM adopts something similar there will inevitably be too much power creep as the years go on. I want this game to be alive 10 years from now.
She’s very weird in her moves, which is exacctly what you want a mythic to be. It makes her special.
Fatal Sleep is a very interesting take on death sentence and Frozen Heart is a very interesting take on enemy team management, same with Frozen Touch. Her SS takes the cake though: how is sleep forever not hilarious?!
She’s hard to build around for sure, but I see it as a challange to build something different in your team, and that’s what I want to see. The meta is not great for her but you can always use her in PvE until then.
A two star pvp reward monster is where there should be some quirky moves on a monster that really isn’t viable. The feature mythic in a festival shouldn’t be next to useless, right?
The two star pvp monster actually has a cost of 6 which is more then what it should cost.
Since it was a free monster and its considered a good protector thats why you see it at top used but if this was a paid monster or with tickets you wouldnt see anyone playing it.
It’s not unusable. It has PvE potential and can work in the right PvP team/meta too.
My point is this: if you want the mythic to have slightly less restrictions fine, but if “to make it viable” you want yet another monster that gets 2 kills per turn then we have plenty already.
She’s a pretty gerl