From axing and then returning core sets to overprinting to power creep and constant bans to Play Design misses ala Oko and Lurrus to Anniversary Edition to destruction of stylistic integrity via Universes Beyond and playable Unfinity cards to gutting the tournament scene to completely swerving the storyline to the freaking Pinkertons to randomly extending Standard, it seems like MTG is just on a streak of ever-accelerating rash decisions. Even though some changes and choices I agree with, this amount of pressing on the gas can't possibly be stable.


Will this stop? Like, will decisionmakers just chill? It seems like MTG badly needs some stability and calm. Lay low, scale down for a bit, and find footing.

Or will we continue to plunge headfirst into more and more chaos and moves of desperation?

I think it's difficult to gauge here without more information to even validate the premise of the question.

I know things can seem really frenetic and dire for Magic players, but Magic players have also thought Magic is on the precipice of failing for as long as I have played the game (since 2000). Gamers, in general, have always been huge complainers who like to whip each other up into a frenzy about what giant idiots the designers of their favorite games are.

But have the decisions that the entrenched doomsayers have decried actually led to losses or failures for Magic? Are people actually buying less because of product fatigue? (And not just relatively, like if you bought all four premier sets in the past but now you only buy the four premier sets and *not* the summer product like LTR this year, you are buying the same amount.) Are people playing less Arena? There is a pattern of people leaving and coming back to the game over time, and are people now coming back at lower rates?

I am not sure how changing Standard's rotation is a random decision when Standard to have been on such a sharp decline in paper for years while players run to eternal formats like Modern and Commander. It seems like players complained about not wanting their cards to rotate out and so stopped playing Standard and are now complaining that the format they stopped playing is going to rotate less to try to entice them back.

The same is true for each decision point criticized here in the OP. Each decision was made with some rationale responding to some players' demand. I think it's more useful to engage with and critique the decisions assuming the decision makers have some form of reasoning.

No, because money

Pretty much.

Even on a larger scale, wotc nuked their stock prices enough to downgrade their investment rating because of the DnD Now fiasco, which means Hasbro's money has to come from somewhere after having shot their mouth off to investors about promises of market growth.
Then there's just the scummy kind of person they've hired to monetize their properties.

being willing to experiment and try new things is probably pretty good to long-term stability, I'd guess, particularly in a competitive and changing market like the one MTG exists within.

A lot of the kinds of things you're talking about (unbalanced cards, ban waves, people not liking the stylistic direction the game is going in, people not liking the direction the story is going in, messing with format structures, mismanaging the competitive scene) are also things that people have been complaining about for as long as i've been playing magic (~15 years) and I'd wager a while before then too.

WotC will course correct with Magic under exactly the circumstances that they course corrected (multiple times now) with D&D: When the bottom line is hurting and somebody comes in with an actual interest in the game to promise that fixing it will improve the numbers that Hasbro's suits like.

I'm thinking specifically of how the D&D Edition Wars went. 3rd edition (for all its faults) was broadly liked. 4th edition, whatever one thinks about it as a game, was an attempt to, under pressure, reach peripheral markets and deliver growth that ultimately they couldn't. 5th Edition walked back on most of the game design principles to things that the players who fled to Pathfinder in the dark times largely liked, and managed to get a much broader audience. Now the whip cracked again recently forcing another mishandling, but that's its own debacle.

So in a sense, Magic's future might look up if there were a competitor with a real chance of snagging masses of disenfranchised former players. Now, Yugioh is already big (I recall it being claimed that it was historically bigger than Magic in terms of Global sales) but there's not much crossover between the fanbases, and from what I hear the competitive scene is super broken so Konami's dealing with some of the same crud as Wizards. There are other TCGs, but non seem really poised to make a move on Magic's old fanbase. Flesh and Blood is probably the one to watch out for since it came out swinging and has managed to get its feet back under it despite getting slammed by releasing around COVID, but it's not there yet. If Force of Will, a pretty good Magic clone with extra Commander parts, were launching right now it might do pretty well but it's aging and ailing. There are "Weeb" TCGs, but those tend to be very niche and not attract the same core as Magic players. Grand Archive appeared recently and tries to be part of both the western and anime-fan worlds, while Battle Spirit Saga seems to be more the reverse with western fantasy art and kind of JTCG-style mechanics.

Until one of those -- probably F&B or BSS, or some newcomer yet to appear -- makes a legit run for Magic's crown and starts drawing away the money of players who are already deep sunk costs into Magic (an issue that PF had... less of when competing with D&D, since new content for D&D Preferred Edition stopped happening), we're not likely to see a dramatic turn.

I am primarily considering the outcome of the D&D Edition Wars. Despite its flaws, the third version was well-received. Regardless of how one views the game, the fourth edition was an attempt to expand under duress to untapped regions and achieve growth that they eventually failed to achieve. While managing to reach a far wider audience, 5th Edition mainly reverted most game design ideas to items that the players who fled to Pathfinder in the dark times enjoyed. Recently, the whip broke once again, resulting in yet another misuse; but, that is a different story.