What about a card like Unscheduled Maintenance but on assets. You may only create one new server per turn. You could add a bit of spice to it by having it as a resource but some text allowing the Corp to spend a click to trash it. If they do trash it you get to trash all cards in and protecting one remote server.
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I was thinking along those lines, except giving them the option of creating more but they have to take a bad publicity to create every server past the first in a turn.
So if they DO spam, theyâll be making it easier to actually trash everything. If they want to save on that cost, theyâll have to ICE things, which means running more ICE.
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Iâm not saying these have the same use. But saying it is op is made mainly on the economical status, so I just looked at other credit sources.
Iâm not sure Sync needs more money than draw to beat anyway.
I think Iâve said it a dozen times during my random rants on JNET.
Something Like an incremental cost every 4 servers could work. You get the first 4 for free, then you need to pay 1 for every server you build from 5 to 8, 2 credits for every server you build from 9 to 12 and so on.
The fact that the Corp cannot expand vertically while it can expand horizontally with no cost is the single biggest design flaw in ANR
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Weâve discovered Urban Planning!
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4 would work with a card pool of assets and upgrades that are not high impact and high trash cost.
But with the current card pool, which will be around for about a year or more, the easiest way out is to step up the cost to just make it cost the same as installing ice. If the Corp is going to sidestep ice, then make them pay for it.
Also, it gets us out of the silver bullet solution zone, which I am all for. I would rather have those card slots go back to my playstyle, rather than shoring up a cancerous match up.
My two cents as someone who has organized 3-4 leagues a year since 2013. Iâm pissed off. Basically FFG has by their inability to simply communicate with the players base thrown away away my free labor and those of the other super fans who have bent over backwards to promote their game and asked nothing in return from FFG but be a semi competent custodian of the game.
Why are you making my job to promote your game harder? How can I sell your game to players that playing in a league is a good idea and sell my FLGS that carrying a non magic/PokĂ©mon card game and supplying prize kits is worth their while when the company that makes the game doesnât appear to care at all.
Foolishly I just keep hoping FFG will be something itâs never been and thatâs serious about organized play. I thought the massive success with destiny would change how they viewed the importance of organized play but I need to just accept that the games they produce are way more important to the fans of those games then they ever will be to the company that makes them.
I had misgivings when asmodee acquired FFG and in my opinion itâs how I thought it would be. Profit making IPs would be pushed (Star Wars) while niche IPs Netrunner/ashes would be sacrificed in favor of new hotness (L5R, Destiny, Arkham LCG).the new hotness i.e. destiny would be pushed even harder (hello new force Friday 30 dollar starter with OP cards that you need two of to get playsets).
Ironically corporate greed is something I should be thematically accustomed to having playing Netrunner for 5 yearsâŠ
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Corporate greed, or just trying to run a business. Thatâs the problem we have, as much as we love Netrunner, itâs just one item in a list of business lines for FFG, and they are of course going to prioritise the ones that make the most money. It doesnât make sense to think otherwise, so we have to be realistic.
If it falls to the fans to promote the game, then so be it - itâs up to us if we want to do that. Similarly, we can promote alternative formats, fan-maintained ban lists, house rules, whatever we want to do to fix the game if there is a vacuum left by the owner in these areas. Itâd be cool if Netrunner was the hot product at the moment, but what do we do in a world where itâs more in the niche category?
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The thing is, it takes a LOT of work to get any new players for your meta. It would be worth it if there was some kind of clear future for Netrunner. It has not made sense to put any effort into growing Netrunner for quite some time, as FFG has not laid out any kind of plan to reverse its decline.
Letâs not act like FFG is some savvy corporate operator that is ruthlessly optimizing its profit. I think accusing them of corporate greed is giving them WAYYY too much credit. This is the same company that has managed to have an AGOT card game that is only mildly popular despite being the same IP as the most popular TV series on the planet. Theyâve created a number of unpopular Star Wars games (everything but Destiny and X-Wing). AGOT LCG podcaster Aaron Glazerâs favorite complaints about FFG is that âif thereâs one thing consistent about FFG, itâs that they hate money.â
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Itâs not a matter of greed but of the limitations inherent to FFG as a business.
For example, they have very few people on their payroll. I donât know what the situation looks like right now but for a long time they had a total of 7 for every single one of their living cards games and more. This is insanely low.
The company is also not organized in a manner that is efficient for a large amounts of games. You have to keep in mind that, for a long time, FFG was a small company printing a bunch of eurogames and with Twilight Imperium as their breakthrough.They are not a big company nor structured as such.
As far as I know itâs a fairly loose company on a structural level. Generally speaking Christian T Petersen just tells people âHey you and you, go work on this game we have here because I think you are the best fitâ. They do not have a LCG or Netrunner department. I might be wrong, but this was my impression.
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On an unrelated matter. While asset spam is one of the inherently strong facets of the game (like fast advance or glacier) and I think some more interaction in this regard could be interesting, I think the only reason it has become dominant has been a few key cards, most notably Friends in High Places and the political assets.Neither NEARPAD nor Gagarin were ever worrysome on their own, while those cards are a worry in both asset spam and every other deck.
I mean, the difference between Genomics decks that score and those who donât is massive.
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Definitely agree with this! One of the fundamental design directions that I have been banging on about for years is that their strategy of strong silver-bullet counters + MWL frequently drives near-tier and fun jank into the ground in ways that more focused solutions targeting the degenerate crap wouldnât. And yeah, this is something I tried to âwork within the systemâ to fix.
Ultimately, what made me stop playing is that the spicey off-brand remix decks I loved to bring to tournaments got railroaded out of competition in an effort to control the degenerates 
; and yes, we could haveâand frequently did have game nights and kits and whatever that operated on the âGentlemanâs Agreementâ, but if that level of competition isnât preparing you for the fun of the next level up⊠most of my playgroups eventually said âmehâ.
They are definitely a much smaller company than youâd think, employee-wise. I donât think this precludes them communicating better (it seems to take weeks-to-months to get approval for any public statements; a smaller company should mean faster approval chains!), though it might preclude them delivering more support for any individual product.
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This is true. As much as Asmodee wasnât good for LCGs, itâs more the lack of care and resources. âCorporate greedâ is only part of the issue. Another massive corp in Hasbro seems to be cultivating their little card game just fine.
In the end, we all know ANR is a minor blip on their radar, and have to just accept that fact. The process of getting support by ordering 6-9 months out, only through a distributor via a FLGS, is ridic. We all know that. Do they?
New player here. I can totally see how an old player would feel given this summary, but I just wanted to say that not all hope is lost. Netrunner does not operate on the same basis as other TCGs, it has a quite unique depth and complexity. Itâs a hard game to get into, but given the right community (Iâm lucky) can lead you to greatly enjoy the game and support it, despite reports like yours. Itâs really weird to see FFG run the game the way they do, and it may well be that there are a lot of things behind the scenes that explain it. Netrunner as an IP and as a card game has the potential to be much bigger than it is if itâs given a proper introduction to new players (what happened to the news of a videogame based on it?). Itâll probably never be in the top10 of TCGs, unless somebody at FFG decides that it needs a 1-to-2 year plan to get big (or somebody rich gets the Netrunner rights off them).
Last but not least: I know itâs probably not something that will help you directly, but if you want a thriving community, take things into your hand by creating guides for new players, help local groups teach new players (everybody talks about GenCon but it may be easier to do these things in a convention like PAX where the board/card competition is not as fierce).
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Christian T. Petersen wasnât able to transition a medium sized company to a large sized company.
This is not an excuse to fail a game.
Medium or big, they are still selling games : these are the blood of their compagny.
FFG is known for his beautifull and fun games, full of extentions, and their 30 pages long FAQ.
They must have too short dev cycles and donât beleive in tests : no other compagny makes 30 pages long FAQ, either they being lazy, but most of the time they donât need it.
As a result, FFG pay twice a usual test budget in after sales.
It means they have product lines. So who cares if something is broken in a product line, here or there, youâll get a faq anyway.
My local community has largely lost players slowly but surely since Mumbad, with a small number of replacements since then. The problem is that the person who ran the GNKs left the game. After that I could feel it not growing but shrinking. Small friendly tournaments are actually a big deal.
To be honest I almost quit the game this year. I was tired and I hated the Decks I had to build because the styles of decks I liked were fucked. MWL made me care again. Honestly, I was a real MWL doubter when it first got released but now all I want is quarterly announcements of updates.
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Eh, netrunner is done and anyone that isnât ardently optimistic about it agrees and has moved on to other games. FFG would have said something about the new pack at this point if they wanted to keep the fan base theyâre slowly but surely losing. If netrunner doesnât make enough money for the company, the company doesnât make netrunner. I hate to say it, but it must be said. Prove me wrong.
Damon left with short notice. Boggs is trying to get control of a ship in motion. Thereâs going to be a blip for a bit but theyâll probably start shipping early next year. Remember the long break between d and d and mumbad
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cmc lives!
Iâve missed your valuable insights and unbridled passion!
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Always a good statement that inspires healthy debate and discourse.
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