Hi Mark,Regarding "Card Churn", "Power Increase", or whatever you want to call it, do you consider what most enfranchised players incorrectly call "power creep" to be a problem or not really?Is it something that can be mitigated? Is this something you are working on? Why or why not?Personally, I choose to play with friends that avoid strategies and an optimization mentality that emphasizes recent excessively "power increase" aspects of eternal formats like Commander, but that's easier said then done for many players and play groups.It's a complicated issue because players do like playing with powerful cards and players get excited about new powerful cards but many players don't enjoy playing against powerful cards as much. So when Magic suddenly starts introducing more powerful cards at a higher frequency, that can fundamentally affect people's game play experiences.What do you think about this as Head Game Designer? Is this an issue or is it the player's responsibility to solve?

If you don’t like formats that increase in power over time, consider formats that have rotation built into them, or use only a limited subset of cards, like limited formats or cubes.The only thing we control in nonrotating formats is how quickly the churn happens, not if churn will happen.

listening to one of the recent limited resources (hi marshall and lsv!) where they discuss the set skeleton. i agree with them that the skeleton has made a huge improvement on the baseline for sets but also that it sometimes feels a bit obvious. i'm curious if you think you will ever develop alternative skeletons that are also proven to work but lend a different feeling? i could see a world where you start a set and decide to use the "tricky skeleton" or the "stompy skeleton" over the basic one.

All skeletons shift as the set evolves, so there is difference set to set. Larger picture, the consistency is about having familiarity for both the audience, so it feels like a Magic set, and for us, as it allows us to better use experience to balance things. I’m not worried that the most hardcore enfranchised can see some of the structure.

I would like to say that I find the gift keyword rather hard to read and understand. While I understand that it's supposed to sound more natural, effects like that are simply hard to read with how the game's grammar works for me. I don't really know what can be done to fix that. But I think more gamist language would be helpful in general

We have discovered that real technical language is most helpful to the deeply enfranchised, and a big barrier for those less enfranchised.

I'm sure it would be a nostalgia set popular for a specific group of enfranchised players, but where is a Sarpadian remastered style set (imagine redoing Fallen Empires with the ten factions with modern magic design) on a supplemental storm scale?

I have faith we’ll be returning to Dominaria. It all being Sarpadia is a low percentage chance, but some of the set could be from there.

How does your research at Wizards show the whole Acorn experiment going among more casual players? Seems like on average more enfranchised players hate it. (Note: I am a very enfranchised player and I liked it, for the most part.)

More Unfinity is getting played in casual formats than previous Un-sets.

More a note and I don't even know if there is a solution to my problem: I am a 100% limited player with a tight budget. With play boosters being more expensive then draft booster, due to budget, this just leads to me playing less. Also inflation is additional stress on my budget. I feel, that I'm getting less and less enfranchised and engaged because now I do less drafts. I fear loosing MTG as a hobby. I mostly play in my LGS and don't have a private playgroup, where we could play cheaper options like cube. I know WotC is a company and has to show growing revenue but it just sucks, that I may loose this great hobby and game because of monetary aspects.

I hear your frustration. The popularity of set boosters meant when we consolidated draft boosters and set boosters, they were crafted more to match set boosters. We essentially made set boosters draftable. I will note that the price of boosters didn’t go up. Play boosters cost the same as set boosters, and, like set boosters, you do get a higher amount of rares/mythic rares, on average, to match the higher price point. But yes, if all you do is draft, the individual drafts got more expensive. None of this change was done to somehow squeeze extra money out of people. We just took the most popular booster product and sold it at the same price, but with added value (more cards per booster and made it draftable).

There are some effects that require a target, even though they often do nothing with that target. (For instance, there are many effects written like "At the beginning of your end step, you may pay {5}. If you do, target creature picks its nose." The "if you do" wording means you pick a target even if you have no way to pay the {5}.)These effects create a way to commit a crime at no cost, but I fear that many (if not most) players won't even recognize that a target is being selected for this kind of effect, thus not acknowledging that a crime has been committed for abilities that care about this.Was any thought given to this problem when the mechanic was designed? If so, is there any solution to this problem for newer players?

There are lots of things less enfranchised players are unaware of. The question is can the game progress if they’re unaware? If kitchen table players play with commit crime cards and have fun and are unaware of this particular thing happening, it doesn’t keep them from enjoying the cards.Magic has a complex rules system, and quirky interactions are going to happen. I will note that “if” triggers will happen, but “when” triggers" will not. For example, take the card Hypothesizzle.

This card only commits a crime if you discard a nonland card.

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?

I saw a comment talking about it, but you didn’t respond to it, so I’ll ask: If/when, sets based around alternate outcomes in the MTG universe, such as Bolas or Phyrexia winning, Mishra activating the sylex instead of Urza, etc.?

The problem with alternate worlds is it relies a lot of the knowledge of the past, something only the most enfranchised know. The Brothers’ War struggled and it’s the most famous story in Magic’s history

Hi Mark! My brother and I really loved playing Jumpstart and Jumpstart 2022, it's a fun product for enfranchised players like us and for new ones. If/when a new Jumpstart set?

When.