In times of social media, google-hangouts and daily emailnewsletters, the HL-Council and this forum seem mideval. From my POV the council members and their decisions are random. CMs (council members) dont represent the communities at all, but rather a group of ppl that somehow where choosen to rule... There are so many flaws in the current banlist and council system.
In a perfect state of HL-Magic:
HL COUNCIL:
The council would include only CM that have been voted by their own community.
To be a community you have to have at least 8 registered HL players. (just fill in your name and DCI no in a sheet of paper.)
Communities will have 1 CM. If there are a total of 100 HL players and community A has 12 players, their CM will have a vote worth 12%.
If a community doesnt want to have a CM, so be it.
CM votings are every 2 years.
Communication:
Why do the players have to come HERE to get the info they need about bannings? why no newsletter?
of course discussion is needed. But throwing arround with karmapoints is 1999.
Council decisions affect all HL players. They should be as democratic as they can be.
Regards,
A Dime.
QuoteWhy do the players have to come HERE to get the info they need about bannings? why no newsletter?
You're right that no-one should visit the page just to check the changes on banlist. I'll construct a RSS-feed from highlandermagic.info. I'll inform here once ready.
I am glad that at least this point caught your attention.
In the meanwhile, do you, as a council member, have anything to say about my criticism on the councils current governing approach?
Regards,
A. Dime
The problem with pure democratic system is huge upkeep cost. I currently reside in a city where there is no LGS. I live about an hour away from three cities that hold tournaments regularly. In what group would I identify as? Am I allowed to be part of one? Are you part of the community if you play once in six months? Once a year? Is the community still alive if LGS does not arrange tournaments? How often those stores would need to hold up tournaments? There are loads of little problems associated with this.
It sounds awesome in theory, but I don't think this is feasible to execute. I also feel like the improvements would not outweigh the current system even if we would find a way to agree about everything. I do not mind the council. I mean, some of their choices can sometimes feel a little random but at the very least, council members will hear from players when they are not happy and probably sometimes when they are. It's not like you are not getting your message heard. Discussions will flare up here regularly and if you feel something isn't getting the attention it deserves, start a thread and people will respond. I do agree that council could be a little more transparent about their businesses, would ease a lot of minds if people could see that they are actively thinking about banned list and such.
Thanks for your input. I agree, to establish a new democratic council needs some planning.
I think anyone who is playing HL, even if its irregularly, should just "register" (name and dci) in any community once and may switch at any time. I am sure this can be managed easily with an exel sheet.
Even if you "don't mind" the council. I think its a suboptimal solution.
Not a single community has an influence on the decisions which are being made. To me some choices are controverse, even more when votings are not public. This gives me the impression of an unbalance of power, emphasized by the lack of a controlling institution.
You may find this too political, but thats my opinion.
Yeah. The "I don't mind" was my way of saying "I know the current system has it's flaws but I prefer it over the alternatives". I get what you are saying here and I wouldn't even mind giving this kind of process a go if there are people willing to compile those excel sheets and most of the little kinks were fixed.
However, the way I see this going is that I feel that choices could become more random than they are currently. The city I used to live has a robust HL - fan base. They love the format and there is relatively huge tournament held every year by one of the community members. A lot of the people in that town have HL decks but LGS there has no interest of running HL tournaments. They could easily become a big community if this system were implemented but if most of their views are due to one annual tournament, their votes could be really weird. We could see very bizarre cards on those watchlists if we just have a democratic vote.
Again, that might not be the worst thing ever. Hell, might even be exciting. The thing is, implementing this change has a chance to make HL chaotic for a good time. When right now, the reins are firmly in place and no complete overhauls are happening. It is very brave for the community to take that kind of risk unless the format is in dire straits. Also, losing the council would cost us clear ambassadors of the format. What I mean by that is it would become much harder for content creators like Marshall Sutcliffe to contact German HL - representative for an interview. This might not be much of a problem, but on the off-chance that someone high enough in the food chain would want to maybe contact our representative to give HL more exposure we might be hindering ourselves a little. Communication between different HL - formats (Canadian, Australian and us) would also become rather hard. I like the possibility of the three of us working together on some level, maybe even eventually forming a single format to maximize player base and that would become harder with something like 20 people in the "council".
I really hate to have to bring up this comparison. But recent human history has shown that trying to force full democracy into nondemocratic systems that worked alright has led to a lot of unpleasent results (see war etc). While I know that the metaphor has holes, the council in my opinion is by far not dictatorish enough to ask for a complete overthrow of a system that has worked for years, requires a sizeable level of voluntary time invested and a level of knowledge somewhat guaranteed by the other council members.
All that said, I would still love for at least one member of the council to be someone voted in by the community. Regarding the look of the forum, complaining is not gonna do the job. Finding someone with enough time and knowledge to improve the forum design and putting them in touch with the people in charge might be a better idea.
One other thing: Everybody please come to MGM 4 on November 7th in Berlin and face the toughest competition there is in HL. Thx.
I also don't like all of the bannings, the council did, but I think it's still the best option we got.
Only one idea:
Rather than a democratically elected council (which is in my opinion complete nonsense and some reasons were already brought up here), I would prefer some kind of grassroots democracy (direct democracy). Instead of a representative democracy, I would like to have the council do the work they already do (unsalaried, don't forget that) and when there are banning decisions they present a list of cards with some statements why the should be banned or not. Then they can just ask the community directly what they want and let them decide. If you want democracy there is no solution which is more democratic than asking the players directly. So for instance, every forum-member with a DCI-number is allowed to vote here in the forum or on an other more suitable platform.
The system is not that flawed, the problem are the people in the hl council who just do a bad job (cards like academy and fastbond legal, wtf).
So yeah if it would be possible to remove them by using a more democratic system we should give it a try.
Well the reason to unban Academy and Fastbond was to give the non existing combo archetype a boost. This was in my opinion succesful. And you dont see Fastbond/Academy decks winning every tournament left and right. UWR and 4c Blood are still dominating most of the tournaments.
Let the next MGM and HL Cup pass, then we will see if Combo Decks are destroying everything, or if it is just another tier-1 deck.
Academy decks are underpresented in our Meta. With the right building and the right pilot they can be really strong. The reason why everyone is playing uwr/4c blood is because its easier to build a deck with all good cards in 3 or 4 colours.
It might also be because playing decks that actually interact with the opponent is more fun.
Quote from: berlinballz on 05-10-2015, 07:51:10 PM
It might also be because playing decks that actually interact with the opponent is more fun.
I don't know, decks that kill your opponent are pretty fun too.
So, regarding to my suggestion:
Let the Community decide what's healthy for the meta or fun/not fun to play against! Let everyone vote for or against academy.
McGyver:
Having member voting for bans/unbans every 3 Months is REALLY REALLY bad. Basically whenever a card gets unbanned we are either stupid and make a horrendous mistake or some idiot thinks that we did - the worst you can do to the format is asking the community and then have a flip flop situation were card frequently swtich from banned to unbanned and back. But this is exactly what the community wants with card often leading both the "dont ban AND please ban the following cards questionare" that Vazdru often does during HL GPs. Every change will cause controversy. Once a cards gets banned it needs to be gone for 2 years at least. This is also why I am not convinced of a SFM unban. Players were raging hard until it got banned and the same people most likely will rage again once it is back in the format.
I get your point and - as I said at the beginning - the current council is the best option we've got.
Btw you already gave the right answer to prevent flip/flop situations: Once a card was vote on, it will be banned for votings for x years.
I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.
Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.
The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.
Quote from: MMD on 06-10-2015, 02:25:20 PM
I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.
Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.
The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.
Wholeheartedly agree.
Quote from: Maqi on 06-10-2015, 04:14:46 PM
Quote from: MMD on 06-10-2015, 02:25:20 PM
I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.
Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.
The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.
Wholeheartedly agree.
The current meta is the most healthy and diverse meta since i play highlander (started 2004). You can basicly play nearly every deck you want to play. If it is a competive deck is now more than ever a matter of your playskill.
Not a single unban did broke the format. I totally agree to concentrate on overall rules now, because we have the best possibilitys at the moment to be creative. The banlist is the last thing i would change at the moment.
Btw, only ppl who are not satisfied reply bad critics usually. Im very fine with the current hl-council and i think you did the right decisions over the last years.
Thank you for the effort and "objective" beeing for all your decisions so far. Keep up the good work.
I fully agree here with LasH post.
One thing to keep in mind is that it's always a small subset of people who are willing to do an extra effort in there spare time to keep this format alive and moving.
I also think that we have the possibility to play nearly every strategy you want.
This for me was not the result of single card bannings / unbannings, a big change here was the transfer from spoil to free mulligan (which I didn't like initially).
Before aggro-type strategies went better and better and control was much harder playable.
At the moment you can win with either control / combo or aggro.
Looking to the future I think we should focus on expanding, the interview with the canadian guys was pretty interesting there.
A lot of guys in my group switched to commander as a lot of new players started playing commander.
But commander is not seen and for me is no competitive format.
In an ideal world there would be "only one" competitive commander with lots of communities in the world (each might have a council) but with a global "council" which might be voted. The people in Canada for example are having the same problems (DCI acceptance with gold/IE cards, growing, ..).
A good thing to work on might be to think about a common banning / point list. This can be analyzing our list / decks against the point system and vice versa.
Probably starting to have a bit more contact with the other communities would be another good thing.
I'm interested in your thoughts.
Good luck trying to combine commander/canadian/french highlanders with ours... Maybe in 2020 when commander players get bored with their format and want something more competitive or when canadian highlanders impossible to maintain point list gets demolished and they need to ban p9 cards.
Maybe someday in the future we can see GP Highlander, probably not.
Quote from: dsck on 08-10-2015, 10:24:47 AM
Good luck trying to combine commander/canadian/french highlanders with ours... Maybe in 2020 when commander players get bored with their format and want something more competitive or when canadian highlanders impossible to maintain point list gets demolished and they need to ban p9 cards.
Maybe someday in the future we can see GP Highlander, probably not.
You must be fun at parties.
Opening communication for this cannot be a bad thing. Maybe each council will come to the conclusion that it is not feasible, but even then discussion would not go to waste.
If we could come to a reasonable understanding about how to merge our formats and have the best of all worlds, the format would get better. Also, if you listen the CR cast, I think you can hear that Canadians are willing to abolish the point system at some point for the sake of being in line with DCI. They would love to see their format grow and bringing their format closer to DCI means that they would become closer to us. If they forfeit the points system, all that remains are cosmetical differences.
Quote from: Tiggupiru on 08-10-2015, 10:55:50 AM
all that remains are cosmetical differences.
Maybe Im a "little" pessimistic but I think these differences are bigger than cosmetic and thats why we have different highlanders in the first place. Or is it the lack of direction from WOTC that people in different parts of world created their own 100 singleton communities?
The format is great and I would love to see it being GP format someday
Quote from: dsck on 08-10-2015, 11:40:14 AM
Quote from: Tiggupiru on 08-10-2015, 10:55:50 AM
all that remains are cosmetical differences.
Maybe Im a "little" pessimistic but I think these differences are bigger than cosmetic and thats why we have different highlanders in the first place. Or is it the lack of direction from WOTC that people in different parts of world created their own 100 singleton communities?
You did rip that part out of the context. The differences are cosmetic if Canadians get rid of their points system in favor of regular banlist. I don't think the differences even as of now are huge and the points system has been criticized for being not on par with DCI, so there is a real chance that it will be changed. After that, merging the two format would be all about if we can agree on a banlist.
Lack of direction from WOTC is a reason, but geographical differences are also a factor. If there are no huge following for a smaller format, like in HL's case, people who want to play similar format rather make their own if they want a way to play with P9 for example. Assuming nobody in their area plays the format already and if they are on the other side of the globe, that is really unlikely.
This does not mean that Canadians think their version is the best possible thing, I certainly do not think our format is superior, but it is much closer to DCI standars which I find to be best for the format. Canadian HL could very well be much more fun than alternatives, but I personally feel that being closer to industry standard is worth giving up on some of the "fun". Not having to buy P9 is also a win in my book. Question now is if Canadians feel the same or not.
I was not talking about commander here as commander for me is / should be a more kitchen table / multi player oriented format (> 20 life is one of those points making me this believe).
For me it was more about non commander highlander formats with a solid banned / point list focused on allowing competitive playing (no color restrictions, 20 life, > 100 cards).
Like said before there are already discussions in the Canadian community about ditching the point system.
From the talk it sounded more like they see problems in managing bigger tournaments as it's less obvious that a deck violates the point list (especially for the opponent).
I don't like all of those discussions about if the council did a good or bad job with bannings.
Most cards in a singleton format are replaceable and probably personal preference, or it needs some time to see if the break or not break the format.
Most cards which were banned were requested by a lot of people to ban so it goes with the community same for the unbanned cards.
For me there are two types of problematic bannings:
- A card with a high price gets unbanned and half / year later gets banned again so people get pissed because they spend that much money for the card
But people can sell the card again so not an absolute problem (I assume nobody will leave the format for those)
- A card which banns a deck (Academy, Oath, partly Natural Order), so people get pissed because they can't play there deck anymore
especially in highlander people tend to spend a lot time in deckbuilding so this I think can really lead people to leave
For unbannings ore actual allowed cards I think you normally see if something is totally wrong (Survival).
Funny that those situations are easier to solve with a point system then with a bann list approach plus for me feels highlander much more like a vintage format then anything else.
But especially after allowing non official formats do be reported + FNM's it looks like a trend to go more with the "standards" + the forcus on a competitve style format makes it pretty attractive to go with the banned list approach which is easier to handle there.
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