I’ve been liking some of the suggestions from the Team Covenant casts. They saw how the meta changes with the SW Destiny release schedule, and suggested a similar release.
Maybe release 3 data packs of cards at one time and the bigger influx of cards will shake things up for a a whole SC/Regional season. I think you would also have to cycle down to 3-4 active cycles as well.
Another suggestion was for OP to declare for a set time that only certain cycles of the active ones would be legal. For example, at the beginning of 2018 until June only Lunar, Flashpoint and Kitara cycles are legal. Then, change the cycles for the second half of the year.
With Employee Strike restricted, do y’all think current wars will de-escalate? Or will Corps go harder on currents knowing that they can more frequently dominate? Will crims need to include Interdiction or Gov’t Investigations just to combat Scarcity or any of the reasonably-powered currents available to Corps?
At the moment I’m playing as and against a lot of CI, so if estrike is around currents are important on both sides because of the power of that ID. When playing non-shaper, estrike is a very viable looking restricted card to take.
Another huge issue is that a lot of runner currents suck and runner economy is a little tight and relies heavily on resources so scarcity of such resources is a problem. I feel like if you’re a runner with a lot of resources you might want to slot a current defensively like corps used to have to do to deny the omnipresent estrike.
I think it is probably still going to be important to think about currents.
EDIT: Especially re:crims, I think estrike is a solid restricted choice in general.
I’ve been playing with triple Hacktivist in every Anarch list since rotation, both for Scarcity hate and to fight the faster asset strategies. Most Shapers are playing a few copies of Interdiction to clear SOR; and I’ve seen Criminals play both Maintenance and Interdiction for the same reason. I think FC and MO are both better choices than Strike for Shaper, and I don’t see a reason to play Crim unless you’re on Gang Sign cheese. The current war is very much still on-going, though.
As a new player I have to ask: how do you play 1,000 games in nine months when games can run a half-hour or more? Do you just play multiple games each day in at jinteki.net, or have friends nearby and play a long string of games a couple days a week? How long do your games typically take? That’s nearly four games a night assuming you don’t take a night off, after all.
Yeah I usually play at least two or three games a day on Jnet—sometimes more—and I certainly do take days off. However, in one two-week span I played 191 games on Jnet (in other words almost 14 games a day for 14 days) prior to my regional tournament. This skews the numbers somewhat since almost a quarter of my games were within a single two-week period.
In-person games I’m currently playing 6–8 a week but admittedly a month can go by without me having played in-person. It depends on the local meta and also what my friends are up to.
Man, it’s hard to be a casually competitive player. I’m lucky to squeeze in 5 games per week. I would love to go to frequent GNKs, multiple store and regional championships, and even nationals and worlds. I just can’t fit it in with work and real life obligations.
Games on competitive jnet lobby tend to be quite fast if both players are up to it, 15 mins or less most of the time. (Depends on the decks too of course)
I don’t think a solved meta is something to fear, per se. If the meta can settle into having an acceptable variety of viable options that all offer satisfying games, then Netrunner is a winner.
For example:
Starcraft: Broodwar was an evolving game for years and then went a decade without tweeks. People still love it because the different factions had been designed and tweeked to match up in ways that were always interesting enough. The strategies were totally “solved” but the game itself was brilliant enough to stand without the wild variety of viable strategies that defined it’s early era.
One could even argue that the whole nature of an evolving meta is that it is a massive collaboration between the players and designers to slowly evolve together toward finding that ideal game.
Personally, I find it a really beautiful process.
Maybe, many years from now, I could even see a “final” version of the game being released with a full set of cards that everyone has finally agreed is ideal and leave it at that. How far away that iteration might be or how many cards might make that “ideal set” up?
I am confident that the designer understands and respects all these concepts.
The catch is that Netrunner is a Living Card Game, which means there is an expectation that it will be expanded and tweaked during the entirety of its lifetime. Even if the meta settles in a good place, there will still be an expectation on the part of the players for FFG to shake things up again. The ‘final’ version of an LCG that you’re talking about is usually done on a per-player basis after the game goes out of print, and everyone who had a good time with it sleeves up their favorite decks and keep them around as a boxed experience.
Personally, I’d like to see Netrunner transition through many, many enjoyable metas over its lifetime (and may it live long!) rather than stagnate in one (even if it’s a good meta).
My long-winded point was more trying to say that solved metas are a different thing that broken metas.
Although let me add that even in the original WotC Netrunner, I have always sort of felt that Netrunner is a game that doesn’t absolutely need the deck-building element.
I do like that it is there for people who enjoy it. But if Netrunner were sold as a pair of decks meant to be played against each other and every few months new pairs were released, I think there would be a lot of things to praise about that system too. Knowing your opponent’s deck that intimately could lead to some very high-level mind games and best of 7’s would almost always end with the superior player winning out.
It would be much more accessible to new players too.
I think in some ways you could say that but in some situation it could also benefit. I feel like it depends on how the decks are designed. In a long series, it could allow for an even more sophisticated level of bluffing and reading.
I’d make the argument that hard-counters add an inevitable rock/paper/scissors element that dueling decks remove.
There are different ways to play, which is part of what is cool. You could design some pretty out-there decks with some usually unplayable cards if they matched up against each other, the way low-tier characters in fighting games have strange and fun match-ups among themselves sometimes.
I’ve come to realize (coming from Magic background and various TCGs) that every card game, no matter what you do, you can’t 100% dynamically balance the game out unless its a closed system.
Netrunner is a LCG, and all we can do is to keep supporting the game, play the game, and grow with the game.
