What’s the solution, then? A long, complex tournament errata of the core set? An embarrassing reprint that enrages everyone who bought multiple cores? Allowing proxies of Core 2.0 cards? Or the continued crippling of the game (or at the very least, restriction of the design space) by overpowered cards and IDs that don’t rotate?
I don’t think you can call core IDs overpowered, they’re the benchmark. Other IDs m at be comparatively underpowered though! The answer is to produce more of the interesting IDs that can utilise different ways of getting to a win condition and producing more cards that aren’t just obviously economically efficient, but work well when combined with a more obscure ID.
10 Likes
I agree the problem core IDs are not overpowered - but they are overly broad; it’s pretty hard to build HB decks that don’t install things or Shaper decks without programs or hardware. And once you’ve designed your operation based HB id or your resource/event shaper where do you find your next design space?
IMO id’s that care about card types should have specificity along the level of Geist - they really shouldn’t be interacting with 57/102 or 70/92 of in-faction cards.
1 Like
Yeah, I don’t know what the solution is, just saying they have a lot of (business) reasons not to do free replacements.
I think the two realistic options might be 1) wait until the game ages enough and go the GoT route where you just completely restart the game or 2) make only the highest-priority changes (let’s say, etf, kate, astro, account siphon, datasucker, maybe yog) to the core and offer a low cost “update pack” containing a couple dozen eratta’d cards.
the former will be too late to help us anytime soon, and the latter will still sting long-time players (though probably not as much as asking ppl to buy 3 new cores) but might be doable.
We should really just be asking for boosts to other shaper ID’s. Like a program you can install from heap for Exile or something. Kate is the best shaper because all the best shaper cards don’t combo off abilities.
1 Like
I think if Geist was in Shaper instead of Exile, he would see play. 3 Clone Chip and 3 SMC plus Deus X and Sharpshooter and maybe splash for Crescentus, Grappling Hook and e3 would be a really interesting Shaper build.
5 Likes
But then you don’t get cool stuff like Siphon…
Nor B&E. Didn’t say it would be better, but would be very different and his ID could do a lot of work in a tool box Shaper shell.
2 Likes
Moar influence on IDs is one way to make the attractive. Instead of the current Wheel of Fortune approach.
4 Likes
Every strong, green Resource is a mild nerf to Kate.
Personal Workshop is, I think, a case study in how to boost other Shaper IDs relative to Kate.
6 Likes
Honestly, if all we want to do is fix Kate, simply errata her so that her ability only works with either programs or hardware, depending on which FFG prefer.
Sorted.
Making Kate worse fixes nothing. Either the worse Kate is still best for generic “good stuff” shaper decks, or else some other ID is now better for this, and so becomes the new Kate- the default ID in decks not built around an ID power. The problem isn’t that Kate is too good, its that “good stuff” shaper is significantly better than any of the more ID focused shaper builds, such as those built for Nasir or Kit. But the solution to this is to print better build around ID’s, or release cards that combo well with the build around powers already released. Nerfing Kate doesn’t make this particularly more likely to happen, and is more likely to just lead people to play Anarch instead of Shaper.
5 Likes
Seeing as we already have Rebirth and cards that play with deck building influence such the Alliance subtype, is there anything that would seriously break the game if you had cards that said:
Intellectual Thirst
Neutral - Event
Cost 0
Draw two cards. For deck building purposes your influence is zero, Shaper cards have zero influence and you may only include Shaper and Neutral cards.
Dissident Tendencies
Neutral - Event
Cost 0
Remove one faceup card in Archives from the game. For deck building purposes your influence is zero, Anarch cards have zero influence and you may only include Anarch and Neutral cards.
Personal Ambition
Neutral - Event
Cost 0
Expose one card. For deck building purposes your influence is zero, Criminal cards have zero influence and you may only include Criminal and Neutral cards.
?
1 Like
So, basically have cards that let you bring an ID into another faction without allowing any influence expenditure? Pretty sure those would be terrible. No ID in the game is worth not being able to use the best cards of each faction.
I disagree that a more focused Kate would automatically lead to a monoculture of another ID.
If for example they did what Taurean suggests and makes Kate hardware* only or programs only you’d see diversity in good stuff builds just like you see in Anarch good stuff builds (where you can effectively pick between Reina/Whizz/Maxx/Val based on preference). It’d be ‘I’m making a good stuff shaper and since I have a few more hardware than norm I’ll pick kate’ and ‘I’m making a good stuff shaper and since I have a few more program recursion effects than norm I’ll pick exile’ and ‘I’m making a good stuff shaper and since I have ProCo and more resources than norm I’ll pick Hayley’.
*I’d prefer a Hardware Kate myself, as Exile/Professor/CT cover a lot of program design space already.
I was thinking of errata packs, like a datapack, for ages. There could be cards to complete a coreset, since the official reason is “but this distribution is made for newbies !!1”
A 1 inf neutral Jackson would be nice.
1 Like
I like the idea of changing Kate and ETF to flip IDs. Kate would have one side discount programs, the other side discount hardware with a click to flip. ETF would have one side gain a credit for an install in a server, and the other side gain a credit for an install protecting a server, again a click to flip.
I think that would slow down both their abilities just enough that it would open the design space in their respective factions, without nerfing them too hard. It’ll never happen without a core 2.0, meaning it’ll never happen, but I think it’s a neat idea.
5 Likes
Yeah, that was the idea. If the decks would be terrible in terms of winning tournaments that’s good, since it’d add an extra restraint on releasing cards to be balanced in future and if really good decks came out of it that’d be harder. The idea was that it might be fun to let you play IDs in a different faction!
Sounds like a fun off-beat tournament idea- build a deck with an “out of faction” ID. Anarch Andy, Criminal Noise, or Shaper Val, and so on. I’d play in that 
Titan transnational nbn has already ruined this for everyone
13 Likes