Hypothetical Core 2.0 for a single tournament

I’m not going to mince words here, I think this sort of thing is a horrible idea. Other than the “what does this card do again?” that will be everywhere in the tournament, it’s not highly playtested design and I can assure you that the metagame will be far less diverse than what it is at the moment. What you’d do is make a new meta that’s different, and with vastly different cards to the one we have now (and therefore extremely unfriendly for players) and almost certainly worse than the one we have now. Rules errata has never been a good thing in other card games and there’s no reason that’d be different for Netrunner.

What’s wrong with Criminal or Anarch? They’re not at all too strong and massively nerfing them isn’t going to help them. Shaper is left (essentially) untouched whilst Criminal and Anarch are completely devastated (those Anarch programs are low inf so Criminal can splash them, cards aren’t meant to not be splashed). Criminal and Noise are next to unplayable (neither are exactly too good now) and Kate loses her link? These changes aren’t well thought out and would only widen the current fissure in power level (any decks that aren’t Kate/RP/ETF are highly discouraged, as opposed to just being a bit worse). Anyway, that’s not even my biggest problem with these sorts of rebalancings:

Often, these sorts of things come from some dislike of the current metagame and some sort of view that it’s a bad thing that one deck is stronger than the others and people seem to think that the solution to this ‘problem’ is to nerf everything and make it bad. One deck will always be stronger than the others. Period. There is always a best deck for any given metagame. No amount of nerfing or rebalancing is going to change that, and the solution is not to nerf one deck into the ground so that another can rise in its place of being the ‘best deck’ (that’s unexciting and makes for lots of small, uninteresting metas), the solution is to make other strategies viable and thereby create a large, interesting meta.

You’re never going to get a perfect meta, and attempting to ‘fix’ it by nerfing the best strategies at the time is not going to make the other decks good. The other decks are only subpar in the context of the current state of affairs, but don’t take my word for it! An example of the (directly) post-Valley meta is probably a good example, and though NEH had become significantly worse, after The Valley, RP had as much tournament presence as pre-Valley NEH, and you can find examples like this all over Netrunner’s past. People will always find the best deck and there will be discussion like this one about how to make Core 3.0 to fix the ‘flawed metagame’. The king is dead, long live the king?

As a last note on the danger of these sorts of things, a lot of these changes seem to be a personal thing and not very grounded in tournament results, such as the Aesops-to-3-inf change or Parasite to 3 cost or the Anarch program inf increase/general Criminal nerfs. Noise/Reg Ass Anarchs and Criminals are not putting up good tournament results and cards like Scorched Earth are not a bad thing! The danger of having kneejerk errata to each deck you find hard to deal with is hopefully apparent, and even if a deck is winning or particularly dominant, having cards that can naturally flourish against it is better than stopping it from working altogether (as a new deck you find hard to deal with will rise and take its place).

I hope I’ve convinced you even a little bit that this is a bad idea. Constant nerfs/buffs to over/underused cards does not change the inherent nature of a card game metagame, and will make matters significantly worse. I hope that if a second Core is ever made, FFG spends time making new cards instead of balance errata.

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I think it’s more interesting as a thought experiment than something to actually implement. Also, if Netrunner ever got a new core set it would go the way of GoT and completely reset the card pool. Core set 2.0 would just cause too many problems.

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I’d like to understand why there is always a best deck, and why this is necessary. It just seems from your wording that everyone should just play the best deck if they want to win. That’s not the case, but it’s not good to hear

Well, the reason everybody doesn’t automatically play the best deck is because we don’t always know the exact meta of a tournament before it begins. Given any tournament you know the exact deck of every player in, you can theoretically construct the best deck possible (since versus every deck, there exists a deck (and a subset of cards) that is the best versus it). Since people aren’t highly advanced AI, even two people who predict the same meta might not make the same deck. The little bit of ‘fuzz’ around being not exactly sure about the meta (but have a good guess) is why we see different decks (also some players don’t like playing certain decks). However, that’s exactly the thing, it’s a ‘fuzz’, and strong players can have a pretty decent idea about the numbers of each deck before the tournament.

There will always be cards that are stronger than others, whether you consider it in a vacuum or for a given metagame, you can build the best deck for that vacuum/metagame. This is not a flaw in design and is quite natural. Trying to nerf decks just because they’re currently the best is misguided for this reason, as another deck will rise to being the best.

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I think nerfing current best decks and making other decks rise to be the best decks is the whole point of these kind of tournaments. There naturally will be the new best decks but it is a new puzzle trying to find them. I am a big fan of alternative format tournaments because I am bit bored to see similar best decks and a bit slow moving meta in general. But I agree that changing the card text might not be the easiest and best solution. Limiting the card pool might work better.

This tournament feels similar to the one a while back where they limited astro to 1 per deck and in doing so nuked NBN out of the meta entirely.

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Honestly, I think something of a restricted list would be better off than actually banning, limiting or changing the wording of the cards. A restricted list where you can only play one card (in the normal LCG limits - up to 3 copies per deck) from the list being something like:

  • Astroscript Pilot Program
  • SanSan City Grid
  • Biotic Labor
  • Scorched Earth
  • Caprice Nisei
  • Markus Batty
  • Ash 1337 420
  • Data Leak Reversal
  • Fall Guy
  • Adjusted Chronotype
  • Aesop’s Pawnshop

Or something like that. While I don’t think having a restricted list is healthy for a game or needed for Android Netrunner specifically, I think this might be a better and easier solution for an alternative tournament.

The point about playtesting is an important one I think- playtesting a game is really goddamned hard and incredibly time-consuming; even small changes like upping influence on Anarch programs would have massive effects on the game as a whole, and one tournament isn’t gonna get enough data to make it work.

A limited list is just like a ban list except instead of strictly banning a card it makes the game more luck-based. It kills strategies but means cards like Caprice turn less into ‘this card is one of the best cards ever printed’ and more into ‘whether I win this game or not depends on if I draw Caprice’. I certainly know which I prefer.

The biggest concern with this list is that none of these cards are too good. They’re all very good, don’t get me wrong, and maybe the power level of some of these cards could have been lower at the level of printing, but there’s a big difference between “we need to ban this” and “we should have printed this a little worse”. At no point in time did any of these cards warp the metagame to the point of “yeah this deck is the only deck you can play”, and even in the peak of NEH’s dominance there was a lot of RP and Blue Sun going about (and the fact NEH is no longer at that point now is a good example of not needing bans to ‘fix’ the metagame).

Lastly, I don’t know how Corp could ever win with that restricted list. The time spent balancing a ban/restricted list is time that could be spent in balancing cards that are being printed, and that extra time will mean you won’t need the ban list to begin with. As a good example, that tournament ages ago that restricted Astro to 1 had a considerably less diverse metagame than ones with real Netrunner. Obviously, you noted that these sorts of things are not healthy for a game, but I thought I’d point out to why.

There are more interesting ways to do alternate meta tournaments, I think. If you want a change from the current meta consider doing a cube draft! I’d hate to be in a local area where half the tournaments ran were tournaments with stupid banlists or restricted lists. I don’t want my local metagame to be shaped by whatever the shop’s TO decides they don’t like playing against this week.

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Could you please share them because I am very interested about new meta tournaments other than cube drafts. Hosting many tournaments I am bit tired hearing “This format is stupid” from the few hardcore players when majority of the more casual players complain facing the same NEH in every tournament. Tournament attendance have dropped a little at least in here but there can be many reasons for this. I don’t feel Netrunner meta is stagnant but I understand some more casual players might feel like it is. Slow releases doesn’t help though and Weyland will be bad for some time Some new ideas for balanced alternative formats apart from drafting would be very welcoming.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a good, viable strategy but I think this might be better than remaking existing cards. Yeah, corp is very crippled in that alternate reality.

@ahein one way is by making a casual-friendly league, including achievements that help some more unique and fun situations to happen. Other way is by making a ‘custom IDs’ tournament or picking a pool of not widely played IDs and randomly picking one of them.

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Random ID tournaments seem to be slowly becoming the go to ~alternative thing, it seems.

You know, instead of Core 2.0, a tournament where only IDs were rebalanced could work well. We already have a pretty good sense of which IDs are too good and crowding out others in their factions.

The ‘alternate meta’ tournament that seems optimal is a cube draft. It doesn’t cost any money more than a normal Netrunner tournament and it’s not trying to ‘fix’ a meta that doesn’t really need fixing. We ran a cube draft at a GNK event at my local store and it was a great success. Everyone had a bunch of fun and some people came down especially for it.

As far as random IDs goes, I can see the appeal somewhat but it’s almost certainly no coincidence that the top placing IDs from the random ID Gaming vs Cancer tournament that went on near me were all some of the more solid IDs. Personally, I wouldn’t ever travel for a random ID tournament but I’d always consider travelling for nearby normal-Netrunner GNKs.

If you’re feeling disenfranchised with the meta and haven’t tried cubing, do that. Organising a team tournament (KoS style) is probably not a bad shout if you don’t want ‘normal’ Netrunner either. Otherwise, I’d wager that changing the meta will result in less tournament attendance. I know I certainly don’t want to go to these types of events. Restricting card pools or trying to balance the game better than FFG are both recipes for disaster with considerably worse metagames. I’m certain it’s no coincidence that the lowest attending GNK at my local store (8 players, we usually get 15-25 for GNKs) I’ve ever been to was the Core only tournament, and I can assure you the meta was not interesting (unless you love playing Gabe vs HB about 8 times).

Drafting is a completely different game, and IMO has a pretty narrow appeal among the player base. It’s a lot of fun, but one thing I’ve noticed about the less competitively focused portion of the player base is that they looooooooove deckbuilding. “Sure,” you’ll say, “but you build your deck during a draft!” You do, but it isn’t the same at all. When I’m building my deck at home, I don’t have to think about signalling, avoiding areas my neighbours seem to be taking, etc. And those things are even harder in a Netrunner draft than they are in a Magic one.

I like drafting, and every so often I put some work into my ONR cube that’s been in development for a year or so. But I’d never suggest it as an alternative format for someone who wants to play in a Netrunner tournament with a different meta.

In addition, in my specific case, anyone in my meta can draft at FFG on the third Thursday of every month. Despite the fact that the Thursday night league at Mead Hall gets 16-24 players every single week, I’ve never seen more than 8 show up at FFG to draft.

As to custom rules for events, the Chicago tournament that everyone loves to criticize – including me, at the time – was clearly a massive success. I still don’t like the nerf choice they made, but there’s no denying that it was a competitive event and that a lot of people had a good time. Even though at the time I wasn’t interested in running or playing in such an event, the conclusion I drew from the results was “let people have their fun.”

You don’t need to do that when drafting, and new players can just draft cards they like. Netrunner can be a bit more forgiving to newer players drafting in that you can play pretty much any card in any deck, even if you choose randomly you’ll have a functioning deck. That’s not the same in Magic because of the colour system. Believe it or not, a format about deckbuilding is very good for people who like deckbuilding. If you introduce them to drafting by explaining the intricacies of drafting they may worry too much, but that’s an issue with the way it has been explained, not the format.

If you’ve never tried cube drafting (Android) Netrunner, I’d highly recommend it. Despite what you might think about it, it can be both fun and enjoyable for new or casual players. The cube GNK we had also had a brand new (I think he’d only played 2 games of core set Netrunner) player before who had a lot of fun and didn’t seem lost at all (he even flatlined the national champion with a Junebug). From personally experiencing new players and casual players loving cube drafts, I know from experience that they’re enjoyable for casual players.

If you’ve tried it and your group hated it, then maybe it’s not for you, but if you’ve not tried it I can assure you it’s a tonne of fun, and picking a well-tested cube will be a lot more fun than untested, necessary balance changes to the game.

I assume they use the FFG draft packs instead of cube? FFG’s drafts are not great unless you really enjoy clicking for credits, and on top of that they cost money, meaning a GNK with those costs a lot more than a normal GNK. I don’t want to pay money for a worse experience than I’d have with a cube. I don’t see any redeeming factor about FFG’s drafts when compared to a well-constructed cube.

I wouldn’t want to pay money to go to a draft with FFG’s draft packs the same day that a league night’s on, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to cube draft at a league night, for example.

If it was, there’s no way to tell that the success was because of the Astro nerf. It got players, but I don’t remember it getting an uncharacteristically high amount. I’m sure that a lot of players came despite the nerf, as well. Would more people have had more fun at a normal tournament? I’m not sure, and neither of us can claim to know either way.

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The fact that the Chicago tournament was as successful in attendance as any other publicized tournament that happens around there means that even if the meta was distorted - which it obviously was - that wasn’t a problem for the event.

Inconclusive evidence in this case means there’s no footing to argue that they shouldn’t have done it or that others shouldn’t do it on the basis of metagame distortion being bad for fun or the game.

I get that you really dislike this type of alternative play and that you don’t want to see it become popular, but I don’t think there’s any chance of it becoming popular. That’s part of why I now come down on the “let them have their fun” side of the fence and have become opposed to the “you’re playing it wrong” position.

In general your position comes across as considered and fairly reasonable, but contrary to the final paragraph of your initial post I’m not at all convinced by your arguments that something of this sort is inherently a bad idea, regardless of the particular changes made in a given case.

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Another card I would look at changing is Accelerated Beta Test. The variance is really crazy and frustrating.

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There’s always going to be some best decks. That’s definitely the way card games work. It’s possible for one deck to become a monster and take up 80% of the metagame or something in a ccg, but that hasn’t happened with Netrunner. So I think the intent of these core 2.0 changes, to nerf the three or four best decks so that there will be 8 or 9 best decks, is misguided. After you’re done the second best thing with rise up and you’ll have 3 or 4 best decks.

The only thing I’d want out of a core set change is changes that address variance. Astroscript Pilot Program doesn’t bug me because it makes yellow powerful overall and on average, it bugs me because sometimes they draw 2 of them and roflstomp me and sometimes they never see any of them and I just win instead. Account Siphon is similar in its high variance, to some extent, so much power in a deck that is running it is concentrated into that card. All other cards mentioned, don’t need to be changed. Yog doesn’t increase variance, drawing Yog directly instead of drawing special order and searching for Yog is pretty minor. People play around Scorch even if they haven’t run HQ and seen it, so it’s not that random. Desperado is a 3 of in crim decks and doesn’t have an effect that is critical to use at a certain moment like Account Siphon so that’s no big deal.

The Astroscript Pilot program change you proposed, like making Astroscript a limit one per deck card, is awful. It won’t really increase overall deck diversity, but the decks people are playing will have Astroscript strategies anyway, just more random, less reliable ones, and the game will be less satisfying to play and less based on decisions players make. One guy will chain his Astroscript into a Beale and go on to win, he’ll swap sides, and his opponent draws Astroscript Astroscript NAPD and can’t fast advance in the same window to do so and goes onto lose.

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I agree that the problem with APP is the astrotrain problem. I hadn’t thought of it as a variance problem, but of course it is. Thanks for clarifying that @popsofctown A token on the first one makes some sense to me. You don’t get any adoration from the public for writing on the moon the second time. But you also get a powerful effect the first time you score 1 of three powerful cards. Making it 1 per deck is ok, but I guess that increases rather than decreases variance. The thing is, APP is way less powerful if it doesn’t combo with APP so it’s probably moot. If there are any cool agenda counter manipulation effects then that can work.

At the moment playing fewer than 3 astroscripts is wrong. I don’t think that will or should ever change (if you can’t fit Astro in your deck, there’s something very different about game balance in netrunner). This is not true of any other agenda in the game. That’s why I think in an ideal world it would be rebalanced.


It might even be worth testing an astroscript that works as it does now, but if you used an agenda from an APP this turn then you don’t get a new token. Just stopping the astrotrain might be sufficient to make people consider other cards. It might also be sufficient to make NBN no good to play any more. Which is not what I’m after.