A few times when people ask for more beast people I believe you've mentioned that Humans need to feature prominently since people relate to Humans. Has anything changed with Capenna? Even though Human is technically the most represented singular creature type, the animal people (Cats, Rhinos, Birds, Cephalids, Viashino, Raccoon) outnumber them by a landslide. (Also will we ever see Noggle again?)

Humans want to be on most worlds, but don’t need to be the majority.

I have a concern about Pioneer. Since khans of Tarkir and Ikoria are both present but no shard set is present, wedge color cards far outnumber shard colored cards in the format. Will we see some shard colors love in any upcoming standard sets?

It’s just a matter of time.

Regarding key/ability words like Ferocious being used outside of their sets: I really wish you would start doing this, especially with very basic mechanics like Landfall. I want Magic to feel like one holistic game, rather than hundreds of small experiments that we never see again. When Ferocious is called Ferocious in one set, and called nothing in the next set, it just makes it feel like you're forgetting your own mechanics. I know why you do it, but I think it would be better if you didn't.

One of the things I enjoy about this blog is that I get to share game design lessons with all of you, but sometimes those game design lessons bleed into life lessons. This is one of those times.A challenge of designing a game like Magic is that there we’re designing for such a diverse audience. Because we don’t have the option of making different versions of the same card (functionally - we obviously have things like Booster Fun for aesthetic differences), we have to make decisions about what best serves the audience as a whole.When making these type of decisions, we most often want to prioritize the needs of the audience with the least resources. In Magic’s case, this would be the un-enfranchised, that is players who haven’t embraced the game as a lifestyle. They’re far less likely to be connected to the larger Magic community (especially on social media) and thus have less tools to figure out things that confuse them. I should note that the un-enfranchised *far* outnumber the enfranchised. To understand why this is important, let’s go down both paths. The current path doesn’t keyword things unless the keyword is evergreen or part of the current set. There is some small inconvenience for the enfranchised audience. It’s harder to search databases for mechanics. There’s an aesthetic disconnection that I’ll gladly admit is a little annoying. It might take a second longer to process what a particular card does.Now let’s go down the other path. We’re constantly making new mechanics, so little by little we’re keywording most actions the game can take. If every action that’s had a keyword had to take that keyword when used, over time sets will just have more and more keywords. This tends to cause vocabulary overload with the unenfranchised because they don’t necessarily recognize older mechanics and they have no way of knowing what mechanics matter to the set as every keyword carries equal weight in isolation. It makes sets significantly more complex for them and will cause many of them to leave the game. I should note that the above isn’t just speculation. In Time Spiral block, we experimented with lots of one-of labeled keywords and it went over horribly with the unenfranchised for all the reasons I listed above. They left the game in droves. And yes, the enfranchised, for the most part, really enjoyed it.The larger lesson here is that when making decisions for the larger group, you want to keep in mind the limitations of those that have the least resources. What might be an inconvenience for the audience with the resources can often be overwhelming for those without. This applies not just to game design, but to life as well.

You often say that the popularity of a block determines whether or not we will return to said block, but will there ever come a time where the number of newer players who never got to experience the block and are interested in it, outnumber the older players who weren't fond of it, warranting a return?

The theory is if players didn’t like it then, they won’t like it now. People change but what players like and dislike stays pretty constant.