“Low quality”!
Boss is not pleased, step it up guys!
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We all want more diversity in the competitive meta. This discussion got derailed when we started blaming FFG for past mistakes. The improving quality of the cycles makes me believe that things will continue to get better.
I still like to ponder on the “what-ifs” certain cards were costed lower or just a little bit more powerful. It’s a creative way to evaluate if a card is truly bad and to understand the gamespace.
Like, what if Exile drew 2 cards with his ability? Or maybe even 3? When does he completely usurp Kate and what possible future cards could break him?
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This is definitely right. I guess my disagreement with the OP and others is that this is some kind of problem worth caring about. I guess I just don’t know what people want to happen here? like, what are the options in the hypothetical world where FF can takesome of this advice:
-spend more on playtesting (and time is money, ofc) and offset this cost with increased prices. SImulate this scenario simply by removing cards you don’t like from your binder. Voila, you have paid more per card, and have fewer duds in your cardpool.
-spend more on playtesting (and time is money, ofc) and offset the cost out of their own pocket. This is not how capitalism works, sorry. Rightly or wrongly, this is not an option and never will be.
-produce “better” cards by simply erring on the side of more powerful when designing cards. Unchecked, this inevitably leads to power creep at the very least, and total game degeneration at the very worst.
-produce “better” cards by simply erring on the side of more powerful when designing cards. When unbalanced cards get printed and a ban list is created for the health of the game. there are now at least as many dead cards as there were before, now it’s just official.
-Increase the testing budget (and budget for the game in general) proportionately alongside increasing sales and popularity of the game. Learn from past mistakes, and slowly but surely get better and better at not printing truly dead cards. Sometimes still print stuff that doesn’t quite seem good (yet?), but clearly is playable, and with the right other cards might even be good.
So, which of these do people want them to do? If this is such a big problem for the game, what’s FFG’s course of action?
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For every Lion’s Eye Diamond there are many, many times as many cards cards that never become good.
There’s another issue here, too:
Lion’s Eye Diamond could have been printed when it was playable, and not before. Leaving a 1 year gap of unplayability is surely not a good goal in development? It’s not like the card would never exist unless there was a point in time in which it was unplayable.
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Good discourse always makes a difference, if not in this game then in future games. They also may print reboots in distant future.
For instance, the small Datapack system is frustrating. I’ve heard many players express desire for just a series of more coherent expansions every 3 months or so.
If they concentrated on designing larger releases with more in-pack synergies, would that stifle or stimulate the creative process?
Which I addressed in the first half of the post. Depending on your definition of good, it may be impossible for every card to be good.
Not sure how much you’ve followed interviews and whatnot, but we’ve heard both of the following things:
- Cycles are developed as a whole (forget who said this)
- Moving forward they want each pack within a cycle to be its own flavor unit. (Terminal7 and recent Lukas comments about SanSan)
This sounds like an excellent measurement standard. “Latest pack rates 5 out of 5 flavor units, will read flavor sheet again.”
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Not too concerned with flavor. Love what they’re doing this cycle though.
I was aware they designed the cycles at once, and I’ve always wondered why we didn’t get more synergies and counters right away, like they did with Plascrete and Scorch. (Give us Jackson and Crisium, or at least Sealed Vault, in the Core)
Perhaps the cycles are too sprawling to think of all the counters and synergies. I’m really challenging the practice of throwing out a card that obviously needs support and then getting to it later. Seems like they are trying to fit the CCG model into an LCG.
So from a design strategy, does it make for more designer creativity to design cards willy nilly and get to supporting them later? Or is it better to concentrate on tight, balanced releases that aim to add a new gamespce that is immediately competitive while minorly shoring up old strategies?
Crisium/Vault maybe. Jackson is definitely on the list of cards I’m going to be glade to see rotate - it’s just you have to print different agenda flow regulators.
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I actually kind of prefer the small datapacks, but that’s because I live on a fixed income and it’s one of my few indulgences each month. I can certainly see the appeal of larger, less-frequent expansions, though.
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Yeah, I weirdly agree with you here (though for different reasons). I like that content trickles out rather than having to wait a long time for big releases - especially with the SanSan Cycle’s new method of releasing most of the related cards in one pack (genetics, historical ICE, etc)- the Johnny in me prefers to get smaller amounts of new things to fiddle with more frequently (so he doesn’t get bored) and spike in me gets to see more cohesive design ideas all at once so I know right away if a group of cards is going to be worth my time.
I feel like 100% deluxe expansions (in addition to being a poorer business descision - harder to keep people hooked in 6-month or more increments) might run the risk of being too cohesive - this can be a bad thing if the idea isn’t great; Weyland’s side of their box is a perfect example of this. If “let’s revamp BWBI” had just been one datapack of ideas, it might have been less of a waste of development resources when it flopped.
TLDR there’s advantages and disadvantages to both deluxes and data packs - I like the mixed approach, especially since FFG seems to be addressing some of the bigger design problems with the cycles.
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While there are certainly cards that are pretty much just bad, I don’t really mind some bad cards.
I do however regret FFG dropping the ball on the trace mechanic as well as seriously underpowering illicit.
For traces they really should have made corp win on tie… (this can actually be redone even now without any errata).
No. 7 to break caduceus is not cool. ID link should all be 0 to make tracing ice good.
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Even if it costs 7 to break (without breaker…), it would still be worse than Architect.
I agree that Corp should win on a tie with a trace. Makes all of the trace stuff so much better. Although, Ash/SEA might be too good at that point.
Yeah, I’m not on board for that. It makes thematic sense for the runner to win ties, Now if you think the base strength of a few of the traces should be different, I can get that.
Plus “Tie goes to the runner” is really easy to remember.
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Magic card sets get a lot more hours both of design and development than Netrunner.
The main reason why this works for Wizards is that Magic makes a lot more money, partly because of the huge player base but also because of the CCG model vs. LCG. The cost to players of a CCG is also a lot higher - playing competitive standard Magic is astronomically expensive these days.
Even with all that extra testing, there are still cockups that come out of Wizards R&D. It’s very, very difficult for any designer(s), no matter how smart, to balance everything “perfectly” for these kinds of games, where balance is defined as “the power level of the cards is close to flat”. Erring on the low power side seems correct for a game like Netrunner where the rotation period is absolutely huge.
There are certainly a decent number of coasters in Netrunner, but it doesn’t seem too crazy. I am definitely in the Spike bucket but the Seattle area seems to have a lot of Johnnies who somehow squeeze something resembling occasional value out of stuff that looked like dead cardboard.
Funnily enough, I disagree even on your picks of “problem cards”. Data Hound is a great example. It’s terrible, just awful. But, I recall the huge discussion on BGG when Alexfrog (rightly) assessed it as total rubbish. Anything that has people actually talking about it is not a waste of space in my mind.
Salvage, on the other hand, is beyond Salvaging. In my mind, that is the point of that card. Johnny fodder, in short.
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BGG users don’t count
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How long did the arcane ritual to burn the last traces of Johnny and Timmy from your soul take? 
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