I seem to always find lots and lots of discourse about block sets. Two sides of the same argument every time.
Side 1 says something like:"I hate all these random sets, I miss block sets."
To which, Side 2 says; "Well block sets never sold as well at the end, players attention span's are better suited for one and done blocks."
My problem with this response is that it essentially ignores the initial statement. Rather than clarifying what they mean, they assume and answer.
Personally, I miss block sets, but ONLY from a story perspective.
Basically, do sets exactly the same as you're doing now. Draft is better now than blocks were, standard with Foundations sounds fantastic. The only thing I'd like to see is a set of setup, and a set of payoff.
MKM was a set based on a murder mystery with the big twist ending basically included in the release, as an example. It could've benefitted from a real, but delayed, payoff. Set up the consequences for each suspect, then reveal and give different consequences that were hinted at in other ways. Bam. Improved.
The last time we visited New Phyrexia, it was a block, I remember ubiquitous speculation over how the story would wrap up. There were factions events at local game stores, branded posters and packs for the factions at play, etc. I had a friend get the New Phyrexian emblem tattooed on themselves. The story felt *Important* and so much less divorced from magic than it does today.
Usually, in my experience, when someone asks for blocks, they're asking for the story to matter. There are lots of mechanically interesting card games out there, and mechanics are only part of what makes magic, magic!
All I would ask is that writers get the opportunity to do setups and payoffs with magic's evolving story with multiple sers, and that story related sets have *some* play synergies. They don't need to share mechanical themes just to share story themes, but it would be a nice little florish if they had mechanical synchronisets,
Hell, a REALLY good idea (in my opinion) would be to do these sets in a different order than the old method. Modern fantasy novels swap POV characters and follow different stories. Why not set up multiple stories in a row, then start to alternate resolving an older, established plot line, and then starting a new one or swapping to another established one. This really gives players time to get interested and speculate (and making the story FEEL present will likely also boost novels and comics numbers, etc., if you need a monetary reasoning.)
What do you think Mark?

We already do a lot of what you’re asking. Each Magic “year” does have a larger connected story, often with different POV characters.

When MTG (finally) delivers an Ocean World, do you suspect it will be an entirely new plane, or explore, for example, the oceans of Theros, the way Ixalan was also Underground World?

Which would you all prefer?

hey mark! recently people I know have been expressing issues with what I'm calling "vocabulary fatigue". Wizards has been recently utilizing a lot of very flavorful mechanic names and ability words, which is something i myself appreciate, as someone who plays a lot of limited and only needs to focus on a few of them at a time, but a lot of my friends are saying is making their experience with the recent sets worse, because they have to remember what cards do when it isn't super obvious from their actual text. In the past year or so we've had a lot of new "action batching" mechanics (by which i mean vocabulary that references a specific action or kind of action so that cards can more easily care about that action without spelling the action out every time) such as "the ring tempts you", "decend", "commit a crime", "collect evidence", "suspect", and "face a villainous choice" as opposed to older magic sets, which didn't deal with this design space as much. although other mechanics in the same vein exist, like Monsterous, their prolificness in the last year or so feels like complexity creep.Although the names are flavorful and saving on card space as allows for powerful and interesting cards, the volume of new vocabulary for older pretty routine actions (such as making your opponent choose things, permanents entering the graveyard from anywhere, interacting with your opponent or their cards, or exiling cards from your graveyard to pay a cost) can feel incomprehensible and overwhelming at times. There's a reason "whenever you cast a noncreature spell" has bever been erattaed to "whenever you exhibit your prowess"
Thanks for reading! Have a great day.

The reasons for the vocabulary increase in the type of effects you’re talking about is the result of solving a core problem. Commander has become the most played tabletop format. In order to hit a threshold that a theme is playable in Commander, it has to appear on more cards than can possibly fit in a single set. In fact, more that can fit in three sets (so even a return to blocks wouldn’t solve this problem.) The solution is to play into themes that are backwards compatible. At first, we just hit upon themes that Magic has been doing a long time (caring about card types, graveyard, typal, etc.). Eventually, though we start to both exhaust those and start to feel to repetitive. One of our solutions was discovered in Dominaria with historic. What we call batching. If we combo existing things, but in a flavorful combination, we create new backward compatible themes that haven’t yet been the core of decks. Yeah, you’ve made artifact decks and legendary decks, but none with those two effects, plus Sagas, combined. In order for batching to work, we need to give it a flavor to hold it together, and that requires vocabulary. The flavor also helps the mechanic feel organic to the set it’s in. In short, player preferences create new design challenges, and this trend is one of the things design is doing to meet those challenges.

Hi Mark! I've noticed a rise in named mechanics over the past couple years where there are specific keyword actions that, while very flavorful for the set they're in, are adding a lot of mental load to the game. I'm meaning the rise of things like Connive, Venture Into The Dungeon, Suspect, and now Plot and Commit a Crime coming out in Thunder Junction. I'd like to express my distaste for these types of mechanics as an enfranchised player that mostly plays eternal legal formats. Often there are only a handful of cards in each set that I'm interested in, and those cards feel a out of place in my decks. I understand that you make cards for the entirety of the magic audience, so I don't expect a single voice to make you change how you design magic, but I wanted to express my opinion on the matter.
I hope you have a great day!

I’m having trouble seeing the throughline of your examples. Can you give me a more concrete description of what you don’t like?

Hey Mark! Positive feedback for you: I really enjoyed this week’s Making Magic on the design of MKM. I really liked your description of the new word-based design approach and I appreciated the inclusion of Mago’s rules for what the new mechanic could NOT be when designing suspect. I also liked getting to look at the long list of ideas you tried for each mechanic. A really fascinating look at the iterative process of design. Great article!

Glad you liked it.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait - Is Case of the Gateway Express a nod to Murder on the Orient Express where each suspect (each creature) has a take on the murder (deal demage to target creature)? 😱

There are a lot of nods to a lot of famous mysteries. : )

Although I suspect the answer is no, I’ll ask anyway. With the IMMENSE popularity of commander, and the rules around color identity of hybrid mana, does that affect how you think about the color pie of those cards? As in, do you ever think “this is fine in one color and a bend in the other, but most people are playing it in a deck that has both colors anyway, so it’s fine?”

No. The color pie has to be consistent across all formats. Also, the majority of Magic games played are a format other than Commander.

Why “can” the suspect indicator token show up rather than being in all boosters when it isn’t even meant to be a collectible.

Tokens and punch out cards tend to appear at the ratio we think are needed so players generally have them when they need them.

Given that you're providing counters to use to mark creatures as suspected, why doesn't the mechanic actually use counters in terms of game rules?

The biggest reason is it’s wordier.

The new keywords/types in MKM by and large seem heavily tied to the detective/investigation theme. How likely is it that we see Cases or suspect/suspected return any time soon?

It just requires a set and story they make sense in.