Desperado off the MWL I agree. Criminal has other ok console options (doppleganger/gauntlet) and desperado is not necessary to play Criminal.
Faust - no need for MWL anymore. So many mutisub ice makes Faust incredibly costly to play. The advantage vs rush is acceptable because there must be some advantage/disadvantage in the game.
Prepaid off MWL: Yes. Runner decks can go event based which will add flavor and diversity and can be countered with Ark Lockdown, scorpios, and other things.
I think you are the first person to agree with me on Desperado. I like to think it is because people have not played much criminal in a long while, and are so used to the ‘normal’ crim. I have not heard any better argument than ‘crim needs it’ yet however, so yeah.
Faust, i’m inclined to agree, but not taking it off MWL and people seem very bothered by it. I have no issue placing it on the ban-list since it hardly does anything especially good for the game either. We’ll see, it seems there is more support for banning it, and i won’t come out in its defense. I think it is important to listen to peoples arguments and not making this about a few peoples opinions.
In the essence, ‘it would be nice and do no harm’ then? Is it worth adding even more complexity to the ‘format’ by starting to take things off that FFG has not?
I’m fine with Prepaid on,but I’m happier to see it off,it’s weak against current meta (event econ vs asset spam is worse than temujin),and if we can make asset spam less viable,Prepaid will be better and be a alternative to resource econ/siphon.
On the matter of BN,I feel like it’s never BN’s fault.Traffic Accident at 1 inf,24/7,EoI,and HHN being a 3-cost trace-4 give 4 tag card (off-model I think,at least lower the initial trace or a far greater cost,not simply initial trace = cost+1),these cards keep released and BN changes from an interesting and powerful agenda that encourages interactive to a tool purely for solitaire (Butchershop,24/7 combo,EoI combo,HHN+BN ïf you run or not you lose").In current meta which HHN is still a card I won’t argue BN to off MWL,just don’t ban it,leave NBN with its option and flavor.
Friends is likely to be MWL-able. The rest of all these seems pretty reasonable to me. And I kinda think that HHN is close to MWL-able too.
I like the approach of just trying to go bans and MWL, and not functional errata.
Alright, let’s try a couple of changes then. Let’s do the 24/7 - BN switch.
Also, we’ll try taking PPVP back out.
Not a fan of Breaking News coming off, if Aaron Marron is still banned and there’s no extra penalty for GFI. I’ve said it in the Breaking News thread, but I’ll link it here too:
Breaking News enables tag punishment too easily. The runner just has to miss checking one remote one time or the Corp has a window to NA it behind gear-check to cause a 2 AP swing (for the cost of just 2 advancement and a 0 cost operation).
It’s really just too easy. And once this list has time to settle competitively, I fear we’ll get hugely NBN-favored meta. MCA Informant is out now, so if you let Breaking News out of the bag, do the same with Aaron. At the very least add GFI to MWL, and maybe NBN will use real 3-pointers.
The options as I see them:
All good points. Personally I agree as I think BN is more powerful than just 1-tier MWL. What I want here is to provoke a bit of discussion in ‘phase 2’ and what you say confirms my reasons to ban BN in the first place.
Since contention in the community seems to exist I want to give people a chance to argue for bringing it back, in essence respond to your points above. If no-one bothers to come out in it’s defence with good points it is likely going back before ‘lock 2’. I like to work with hearing all sides, and sometimes the only way to get people to talk to eachother is to facilitate discussion.
Final list fixed for GothCon Netrunner tournament! Main change is adding 24/7 and MWLing EoI as well as letting Breaking News back out again.
I was waiting and hoping for the new MWL update, but there is only a week left, so we have to fix this. I’ll doublepost in the FB event for easy reference.
IMO Aaron has to stay on regardless of what tags are doing. It completely invalidates any kill strategies that aren’t combo-based (going from 5 to flatline in a paid ability window) with the biggest hit being Jinteki.
Elusive, when are we likely to see newer cards enter the list? Estelle Moon? What about Hasty Relocation - I’d like to point out that arguably the strongest deck in the game, CI combo, is untouched with all your bans and actually is buffed with the loss of some runner cards.
Hey,
I put this project on hold immediately following the new MWL. The reason being of course that i would like FFG to take their official responsibility and do this sort of thing rather than us in the community.
This is because they are better positioned to both neutrally analyze, communicate and deal with the different problems by the best action (bans, mwl, new cards, errata etc).
They also have way more authority than any group of community members, and we do not want to split our little community.
Now, i have experienced what you say personally. Aaron is as blunt an instrument as Rumor Mill, Moon is obviously a problem (even though it is counterable) and i recently lost matches at a regionals versus the weighted lottery that is the extremely simplistic new CI7 strategy (which was fun for neither player might i add).
I was really hoping the new MWL (and PS errata) would do it, even though it struck at a lot of right places there are still problems left. I’d argue that 24/7 is also one of them. As is asset spam to a lesser extent (maybe this is Friends). Look at euros top decks for example. Lists with 3 Rumor Mill even though it is Tier 3? Dyper, still? Moons everywhere, and easy-kill with 24/7. I happen to know of at least one Blackmail Val with RM there as well.
Really shows where we are, doesn’t it.
We cannot fault players for playing good things, of course. We have to be very mindful of that in any discussion like this. It is the role of the designer to create a deep and balanced game. Damon’s comments recently were way out of line in my opinion.
To be honest I haven’t decided if this means i need to start asking questions here and reexamine this list again.
I for one am not interested in facing autoloss matchups or being forced into very narrow deck selection into things i do not enjoy playing anymore. Whether that means taking up the fight again or simply pausing playing the game at all i have not decided. I do think we should wait until rotation hits to react however, if FFG did their duty that is where it will all start making a bit more sense again.
I have been mulling over the subject the last couple of weeks, and i do have a lot to share there i think. Might become an article, if i have the energy.
Do you have a link to Damon Stone’s recent comments?
Like totsuzenheni, I am also curious about what comments were made?
I believe that Elusive may have been referring to Damon’s contribution(s) to this BGG thread: At what point did the game change? | Android: Netrunner.
Hmm… I think he gets at some good points there, but I think he ultimately fails to justify that players want a “solved” game and also contradicts himself there. He seems to believe there are ignored cards of a sufficient power level that could be used to combat a given meta, but then also laments that players rapidly “solve” the meta via online testing. If those cards were enough of a power level to combat the “solved” meta, then it wouldn’t be “solved”. I think Damon, in general, grossly overestimates the power of some cards that simply don’t work effectively outside of a vacuum.
I especially disagree with this statement:
“…but I’ve come to realize that a segment of the competitive player base wants a narrow “solved game” and will fight to achieve it at every turn, but immediately demand FFG to give them a new puzzle when their own actions lead to stagnation.”
That is mutually exclusive with a card pool of existing diverse lines of play. If the game is in that state then it is the fault of the Designer who has not included enough viable(!) counter or proactive cards with which to combat certain lines of play. Not pet cards that the designer thinks should work, cards that actually do work. If they exist then they will be used! I think this is something Damon continues not to understand, and I think that it’s telling that the game was reasonably diverse until Lukas left, then became saturated with NPEs and imbalanced power cards under Damon’s lead, and is back to what I consider a much more fair, healthier meta just with Bogg’s changes to the MWL. He didn’t even have to steward actual card design yet to help the game.
This may be a bit unfair to Damon as we can’t know if he would have instituted the same kinds of changes Boggs had, or if he had a part in initializing them. But, based on Damon’s previous comments about design and the Netrunner meta, and some of the cards that have come out under his watch, I think he’s actively bad at evaluating card power levels. He has overestimated the viability of some cards (and lamented their non-use) while underestimating the warping effect of others.
If the players aren’t using certain cards then their design just hasn’t justified their use! You can’t get mad at the players for that!
Edit: If you go to that link, thebigunit3000 made a post that speaks the truth, so hard, and I would guild it if it was a Reddit post.
Yep this is absolutely true. You see arguments about cards like O2 shortage, which doesn’t matter at all because its not tearing up the meta game, but the fact that he’s defending such a card makes you wonder what other mistakes he’s let through because of a lack of understanding of the game - and there are a lot!
You can’t blame the players for playing the best cards, especially at a high level where competitive edge is the main thing that counts. You just have to make the format so that the best cards aren’t horrible experiences.
With regards to the new MWL, I think it was 90% a good step in the right direction. I think Elusive has already touched on which cards should be on there, and a few of them probably should’ve been on the first one. Hopefully the 20 card limit isn’t arbitrarily kept in place and we can work on the cards that are actually the problems.
I agree about the new MWL not being perfect, and meant to state as much in my post but forgot. It’s a great first step, but things like Aaron and probably Estelle Moon (just based on her pure efficiency stats) need to be there. Given the recency of those cards I can overlook that for the moment, and it may even be prudent to wait for rotation. That said, if the MWL doesn’t get updated fairly soon after rotation I will have concerns.
Edit: Oh, and if Damon is defending O2 Shortage then he’s a lost cause. There are just about zero scenarios where the runner doesn’t just take what is essentially an unpreventable net damage to prevent the Corp from gaining two clicks outside of having no cards in hand. Are you kidding me? It’s like a really expensive Neural EMP. Those effects have such an uneven impact it’s bonkers. The idea that O2 Shortage is in any way a viable card is demonstrably unpalatable.
I don’t frequent BGG so I hadn’t read Damon’s comments. The bit about a “solved game” feels wrong. I also think the entire competitive/causal divide is artificial. I play in a tournaments, I’ll netdeck at major events when I want to do well, I’ll grind practice games. I’ll also play ridiculous, utter jank because this is a game after all and it’s fun. I think that’s true of a lot of people here. Stimhack is a community for Netrunner first and foremost, competitive Netrunner second.
Also blaming a competitive community and an online client for figuring out what cards are the most efficient is ludicrous. This is the sort of thing I can’t imagine Wizards doing, they’d just ban the damn cards if need be and admit their mistake.
But anyways, I started writing this post because I actually wanted to defend Damon. There are hints in that post that he wanted to help the competitive meta—that he had ideas for a more complex MWL and a ban list. These are things we’ve wanted. He did introduce the MWL almost immediately after becoming lead designer. And while it’s certainly debatable, I think it’s fairly well-accepted as a necessary balancing tool that the game truly needs.
[Flashpoint] was also the first set designed with the knowledge of impending rotation so there stayed to show cards that would scale up our down certain mechanics of cards that would be leaving the environment the year after release.
This is an interesting statement and it helps explain why Flashpoint was so unbelievable in terms of power level. I’d argue it was, far and away, the most powerful cycle, and at the time that freaked a lot of people out (myself included). But when you start to see the cycle as a basis for what comes post rotation, some cards make more sense. Crims make money; they get Temüjin. NBN tags you; they get Hard-Hitting News. Etc. Now, are all the cards from that cycle perfectly designed? No. But I’m much more willing to accept their heightened power level when I think of a post rotation environment where we’ll need new staples.
Man, that Damon post has 54 up votes on BGG! Guess we competitive no-fun-niks are the vocal minority around these parts
There’s a reason I stopped going to the BGG forums for Netrunner and started following Stimhack exclusively.
Argh, I almost fell into the trap of posting a reply to that topic, because someone claimed Faerie, John Masanori, and Snowflake were underplayed.
shudder