Those lists arent serious are they?
Zaibatsu better than Turtleebacks or Melange, no space for Test Run, Vigil or PW.
I would be more intersted in seeing the “worst” 25% anyway. Or wether someone can name 90 unplayable cards from lunar, as there apparently are.
The unplayables!
I definitely wasn’t aware that ANR isn’t Lukas’s main responsibility. That’s a bit embarrassing for FFG as a company. My point still stands: I’m not content with ANR as it is. Most seem to be; that’s fine. Most seem to have accepted the LCG model as something similar to the standard CCG model. We will get some cards we can use, and a lot we can’t. Oh well, the designers can’t be perfect. That’s not good enough for me.
@PeekaySK I actually have designed custom classes for DND 3.5 and Pathfinder, and currently have a couple passion projects of games. I test them almost too rigorously, to the point of the process being excruciatingly slow, but I believe it is the best way to approach design. It goes back to another conjecture of mine, which is wondering if we would get better design if the game was in a deluxe-only xpac model. Time constraints add additional pressure to any job; I personally just hate to see design suffer for any reason.
I don’t want to misrepresent here, I believe it is his main responsibility, just not his only responsibility.
Do I think FFG should do things differently? Absolutely. I think FFG essentially has no idea what they have in ANR, don’t know how to run, manage or design it properly, both to get the most out of the game, and to make the most money. That doesn’t change the fact that playtesting is not “easy” in any sense of the word, nor that Lukas and the playtesters have done an amazing job so far.
I disagree for at least 20% of your list (since I played them in tournament already and found it not that bad). I think you’re making a mistake : unplayable == underpowered. You can play with those and have a great time. ANR isn’t all about ultra competitive tournament. Let casual players have fun with the game too.
On a side note some cards like feedback filter would have been on your list last year. Sometimes a “bad” card is just a future “good” card.
Playing them in tournament and winning in a tournament are 2 different things. I think the definition of unplayable is if it has never made top 4 of a tournament (even small 8 mans) anywhere in the world.
I’d bet that over half the cards in the card pool meet this definition of unplayable.
I think you missed my point. I didn’t say those were t1 competition wise. But there is a difference between being not competitive and unplayable. If your only appeal is the competitive environment (I personally enjoy it very much but like to play jank from time to time) of the game then you’re right : they are unplayable. We are not the only kind of players. Some like to bring RP full code gates + encrypted portal and rielle stealth with dagger in tournament (I know a guy) with good result so far. ^^
You do also know one? Or are you from sweden too?
From belgium actually. Calimsha knows him too. 
Underpowered is what unplayable means. They can’t physically force themselves out of your deck. As cool as that would be.
I had refractor as my code gate breaker one tournament. Was a bit frightened that I would run out of stealth credits if I would have met him. Luckily I didn’t.
Well unplayable isn’t the same as underpowered in my book. You can play some cards of your list, even competitively, and have really decent result (like encrypted portal in a full code gate who shit on cy-cy and Zu all day long and mean you have to scavenge Atman or see it become useless). You can play a lot of them and just successfully have fun, even in tournament, (like labyrinthine server in a medtech with kill server).
I’m not saying the game design is perfect the way it is. I think it’s just better than you seems to think.
@Therad : Imagine what I thought with my 2 Cycy.
I’m not arguing that the game design is bad. Check who’s been posting those things. About 30 very bad (I’ll avoid ‘unplayable’) cards per cycle is a little high, but nothing too troublesome.
Well sorry if I misunderstood you. It wasn’t my intention. Your list was in line with the previous ones thus I judged your intentions probably too fast. Sorry. ^^’
I’ve also played against someone who played tyrant for fun in a tournament. Doesn’t make it not garbage.
Part of the problem is that there will always be bad cards, too. It doesn’t matter how much you try, not every card can or will be good.
What ANR has is a massive number of fun cards that let people try new things. Are most of them competitive? No, but ANR has a surprising number of genuinely competitive decks and builds for its size right now. But there will always be a “best deck” or two, and a “best list” for that deck. Different testing and balance might make that better, and the curve isn’t as sharp as in some games, but if you want to be particularly competitive, there are correct and incorrect choices and no amount of balancing will change that, much as the dream is beautiful. It just might change what they are.
Well tyrant was in the tennin deck of polish champ iirc and it was the right choice. Regarding Ronin (you think it’s not good apparently), it was one (if not the one) of the key cards in mtgred’s deck last world. I’m not sure of what you’re calling a garbage card. :-/
I think you hit it right on the head. For 90% of unplayed cards, the issue is that they just aren’t the best choices (not every card can be) or that they have an effect that can’t yet be exploited well because of lack of support cards. The former is unavoidable, the latter is fixable. when you take into account the massive casual playerbase who can play around with these subpar cards and have a great time changing things up, it’s hard to see these cards as truly poor design.
For the last 10% (or less) of unplayed/unplayable cards, they are truly duds. gingerbread, power tap, Net police - these card will almost certainly never see significant play, even by very casual players. Most of them are simply cards that were intended to explore design space that turned out to be a dead end; in the case of the above cards, heavy trace-based mechanics just didn’t have much to add to the game, so cards in this vein will never be worthwhile.
While this latter category is pretty inexcusable design-wise(it’s pretty hard to argue that no one could have predicted that Net Police would never see play) I also think we’re seeing less and less of these types of cards. for example, I don’t think I’d put any of the cards from the last two data packs in this category, and there were only a handful in the last cycle. It’s probably true that the tight timetable of the data-packs is probably what leads to these types of cards being printed - that said, I think they seem to be doing a better and better job at ensuring that cards aren’t truly in this category of Never-will-be-playable.
Changing traces to open bidding for ANR pretty much killed all of those cards before they were even printed. I’m glad they got rid of dedicated link cards, but hidden bids were great! Open bidding means every trace card is basically just a straight econ check without the ability to bid low and tax the runner.
[quote=“voltorocks, post:78, topic:3667”]
It’s probably true that the tight timetable of the data-packs is probably what leads to these types of cards being printed - that said, I think they seem to be doing a better and better job at ensuring that cards aren’t truly in this category of Never-will-be-playable.
[/quote]And as noted, many many of the cards that don’t work are straight imports from – or reactions to – ONR cards and strategies that no longer function. Like, Bad Times is terrible right now, but apparently in ONR it was super powerful and the cause of no end of troubles. (I never did ONR, so I’m reacting to hearsay and what others have said about it, do note.) But that means that in doing a reprint of an overpowered card they’d be tempted to either make it less powerful or leave it alone and see if it still is, and usually either way it ends up pointless.
That may or may not change as cycles carry on and whatnot, I can actually see situations where Bad Times’d be worth playing, as Anarch and Shaper step more to the fore and Criminal falls back, but whether these imagined situations come to pass or not is hard to predict.
I could see an ID or asset which closed trace bidding being pretty solid, actually. Maybe both. If an NBN asset would be good with Making News, if not would be good elsewhere. I have the feeling Psi was an attempt to bring closed bidding like that back into the game, with… less than desired success.