I’ve noticed that lately there’s a trend of trolly decks being posted on NRDB which get a lot of fake positive reviews. Gotta say that as a newer player, these kind of posts do not particularly help.
While I get that this is a “joke” done light-heartedly, others trying to improve their game might get confused by it. It’s difficult enough for us new players to get into the game.
Please consider this next time you’re about to post such a deck or comment on one. At the very least, try to make it clear that you are not being serious.
We’ve had this discussion quite a bit in the NRDB in Review thread. The only thing less helpful than a joke deck is a deck that’s proclaimed as Tier 1 and unbeatable after two games on Jinteki.net.
While I agree that joke decks on NRDB is unnecessary, a new player is better off looking at the tournament decks here or on acoo, and following relevant archetype-discussions on this forum, rather than looking on NRDB
Even as an old man of the scene, I find the joke or Troll decks as chaff getting in the way of the real sexy stuff.
As you say, I can appreciate the lolz people are having, but it doesn’t seem the best place for it. It’s the internet though, so you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. Acoo is a good source of high placing tournament decks and you get to see lots of variations (check out the variety of Foodcoats decks in the top 16 of Worlds for example - much better than having One True Deck).
Sure, it’s not my jam, but honestly people having fun is kinda the point of Netrunner, right? What I don’t get is this new wave of GateKeeping going on. NRDB-in-review being overly critical, posts like this criticizing someone else’s fun because it’s not your fun. I dunno folks, this kinda stuff just isn’t helpful in the long run. We don’t need to separate into ‘casual’ and ‘competitive’ crowds all the time. Just chill and use search functions on NRDB if you want to look for something specific, but for as long as there are different kinds of players playing this game, let them do what they like in the space. Without criticism of their fun.
I mean, at the end of the day Netrunner is a game. I just wish there was a tag or something to denote gag decks so that new players that don’t know better don’t get hung up on them.
I don’t think that the complaint is with “non-competitive” decks but with lying in the description (and comments). Claims that cards form an awesome combo when they don’t even interact, claims to have won invented tournaments and so on. It’s done in a tongue in cheek manner because the claims are so ludicrous if you are familiar with the game that it’s obviously a joke, but maybe it isn’t apparent if you are new to the game. It could possibly frustrate people still learning the game by trying to work out how card A makes an awesome combo with card B as described when the joke is that they don’t interact!
Worrying that new players won’t understand the humor is pretty slim on the ‘chart of legit reasons to tear someone’s fun down’. Part of the experience being a new player is exploring new ways to play, both bad and good. If a new player takes a joke deck literally and thinks it’s going to work out great…well…swell. They’ll learn. Just like they’d learn building their own piles of steaming garbage homebrewed. So what? NRDB already has a system in place to describe decks that have performed well in tournaments.Stimhack has an entire section devoted to winning decks as well. New players will explore the game and decide for themselves over time. We don’t need to play some kind of white-knight gatekeeper on their behalf by keeping things ‘super cereal’ all the time.
Perhaps the most constructive thing NRDB could do is clarify the ‘deck placed in tournament’ tags to be clear when it’s used that not only did it place well, but actually won or placed in top 4? I dunno. It’s still self-reporting and completely unverifiable, but it’s a small tweak that would be nice.
I think it’d be good if there were two different ‘like’ buttons on NetrunnerDB (maybe a like and a lol) so there is one to indicate I’m amused by deck/post and one to indicate I think its a good deck.
Then the trolls could get the attention they crave but filtering by the second type of likes will still be a useful heuristic for finding strong decks.
I don’t think it’s tearing someone’s fun down, the bit that I find a mildly uncomfortable is folk being either in on the joke and then new people not getting it because everything is written as it totally serious. Sure we all mostly get it, but it just feels a bit like when you walk into a game shop and the “regulars” can’t be a bit sneery to n00bs.
I doubt that’s the way it’s intended, but you know, it could be seen in a certain light. I’m not the internet police though, people can do whatever they want. They let me on the internet and I come out with some right bollocks.
Being one who has uploaded a troll deck on NRDB, I’m not going to try to justifying my actions. However, I want to explain that even troll decks serve a purpose. Sure, they’re fun for some. But they also illustrate a point. There are a lot of decks claiming to be Tier 1 or very good or doing incredibly unique things when they really are just bad decks or worse copies of existing archetypes claiming to be incredibly good.
We did this thing where we tried to push a terrible deck to the front page, illustrating how easily one can mess with the NRDB front-page system. Alsciende, even though I love your work and I think that you’ve done a massive job (and I use NRDB almost every day), I think it’s right to point out to the flaws. Now, I do agree that posting bad decks too often just kind-of defeats the main idea of NRDB, however, I think sarcastic works like these help raise the attention towards the issue.
Just because people assumed I was making a joke and I went along with it when I posted perfecting the hub doesn’t mean that I didn’t play the deck for several weeks prior to publishing. The real “troll” decks are usually thick with sarcasm, regardless, and the people who are commenting give away that the deck isn’t seriously any good.
I for one can stand a little bit of irony and satire in the world.
I actually really liked that deck. It was unusual and had interesting synergies. Not to say that it’s a perfect deck, but I played it and it was fun.
I personally think being honest is better than being dishonest, but so long as we’re all willing to let people in on the joke I don’t have serious qualms with joke decks that claim tier 1 status. I think it’s more important to reach out and communicate to new players than to scrub the resources of things that might confuse them.
I feel like the troll decks are a form of gatekeeping. Maybe it’s a perfectly innocent joke about silly decks, but to me it comes across like the players doing it are poking fun at the people who are posting their slightly jankier decks quite sincerely. Trying to make the joke deck write ups serious in order to try to get deck of the week is especially shitty.
Can anyone clarify what counts as a troll deck? I haven’t been on nrdb for a while. Are they decks that have a plan to win but just aren’t very powerful? Maybe the local game store is not a very strong field so the decks seem better to the creator than to stimhackers. Or are they decks that aren’t even trying to win like this one Chaos kills herself · NetrunnerDB