Influence Inflation

whoosh right over my head

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I fail to see the logic in influence value decreasing with the increase of the card pool. I’d argue the opposite, largely due to the limitations on deck space. Take the example given that Corps in Core used influence on Beanstalk. Nowadays, many decks splash for Sweeps Week, even though it costs twice as much influence. As the card pool grows, cards of each role (economy, utility, ICE, etc) compete with more and more other cards. Generally (and ideally, IMO), the better a card is in its role, the higher its influence should be. Sweeps Week is a good example. I would argue that it is better economy than Beanstalk, and therefore costs more to splash. As @bblum was saying, when faced with using all your influence, it often comes down to deck slots. For this reason at least, I think influence becomes more valuable as the card pool increases.

This would be a very fun ID.

I realize my argument may seem to point the other way. What I mean to say is not that each individual influence point has more value per se, but that an ID having sufficient influence becomes more valuable over time.

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But in theory, with a big enough card pool everyone will have an in-faction solution, so influence won’t be valued as highly. This is limited by set rotation, obviously.

One example would be Anarchs needing to splash Lucky Find for an econ card. Then they got Queen’s Gambit. Both are 2 clicks for 6 credits with different “costs”, but either way it gave an in-faction option to free up influence.

Ergo, eventually power IDs that have really strong natural abilities but low influence will be valued highly because an in-faction solution will exist for whatever problem they have.

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I long for the day that influence is strictly spent on what ‘trick’ are you importing, what ‘surprises’ are bringing, rather than “okay so 3 influence is automatically dedicated to this card, because without it, I’m significantly weaker.”

If every faction is self-sufficient, influence plays become more of a stylized or exploiting aspect, rather than a necessity…and that is good for diversity and experimentation…and surprise!

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I think your argument is actually agreeing with me and @bblum but I don’t quite follow it?

What I am saying is that Kit becomes better in the future as the drawback of 10 influence becomes less severe.

I am saying that Custom Biotics becomes worse in the future as the advantage of 22 influence becomes more marginal.

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I think the point is that influence isn’t strictly degrading, because as you’re getting stuff in-house, other factions are still getting tools for you to import. Its just that a shaper deck that spends 0 influence will become progressively less worthless, and I think as the game matriculates out these 1-inf. wonders like Jackson and Eli, Custom Biotics being able to take a staggering amount of them could accumulate into the value of an ID beyond having to be a janky purple psychographics deck.

If FFG wanted to, they could deliberately buff IDs like this by printing strong cards that cost too much neutral influence for other IDs to want to include them.

For example, neutral agendas that cost influence, a Corp Lucky Find, or super-grails that cost 2 influence each.

In your specific example about a ton of 1-influence cards - CB becomes better but does it really overtake an HB:ETF that gets to take the best 15 of those cards, including the Jinteki ones that CB doesn’t have access to?

IMO, it would take conscious design decisions to rescue CB, and by default it will languish forever.

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NAPD is the corp lucky find. But yes.

I’m still waiting on the 5-influence super-efficient neutral icebreakers to make the professor good.

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I can just see why FFG is conservative on the influence. As they explore more game space with new cards, they can’t predict what will synergize with what.

It’s a long way in the future before this happens as most IDs haven’t filled out yet, but eventually there may be a killer synergy between, say, some 4-influence piece of Weyland upgrade, Caprice, and Bioroids that makes Custom Biotics really cool.

Eventually, they’ll reach a critical mass of cards that they’ll encounter some of the synergetic issues Magic deals with. Netrunner is designed tightly enough that it will never see the same level of broken synergies as in Magic, but in the distant future influence will likely become stronger.

That’s a rather ridiculous analogy as no one would have done that before seeing as how death was never on the line.

…sorry

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Super efficient icebreakers are kind of obvious though. Wouldn’t it be more Professor like to have absurdly wide decision trees and do surprising things with niche programs?

What if Professor could play this card:

Birthing Pod
Neutral - Program - 5 influence - 2 MU - $2

Click, $1, Trash an installed program: Search your stack for a program costing $1 more than the trashed program and install it, ignoring all costs. Use only once per turn.

@mediohxcore still needs to design a card from Worlds, right? Gotta top Architect somehow.

A good example of influence mattering less as the card pool grows is Weyland and code gates. Since most decks want to run all types of ice, including code gates, and Weyland hasn’t had good code gates until recently, they have had to spend influence. Now that there are more and better Neutral and Weyland code gates, the influence isn’t as crucial.

Um, he already does that with the current card pool. All you really need is 20 really funky programs and some SMCs.

Sure, you can SMC into Expert Schedule Analyzer and check out HQ. But then you can’t:

Pod the Analyzer into an Imp and go knock out the Biotic you saw in there.
Then Pod the empty Imp into a D4V1D and show some large ICE who’s boss.
Then Pod the empty D4V1D into a Sneakdoor Beta and pummel Archives until they defend it.
Then Pod the Sneakdoor into an Opus and be set for economy.

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I think we can leave that card in MTG, but yes it would make professor more interesting and is a good example of how to do such a thing.

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I don’t think we quite agree; I understand you and Ben’s argument and apologize for not putting mine the best. Basically, I am saying that as the card pool grows, I believe the gap between optimal and sub-optimal cards grows. The optimal cards tend to be higher influence, so IDs with less than optimal influence will be forced to play less than optimal cards, which will result in their lists never being Tier 1. This is evidenced right now in Kit by Legwork, the premiere HQ pressure card in the game right now. Shapers should be running 2 IMO, and this leaves Kit with only 6 influence. Also, due to 10 influence, Kit basically has to play MOpus for economy, and personally it doesn’t make for the most competitive economic foundation.

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…and you can do most of those things with Scavenge already.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy such a card (as a Professor afficionado), but I don’t think it solves the most urgent of Prof’s current issues. He can already do some sweet-ass program-related magic noone else can.

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If you guys want to branch a discussion about the Prof, I’m there. Can we start a new thread?

just go to the Professor thread

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Hey I wasn’t being serious when I said that, going for a sort of sarcastic, irreverent overtones kind of thing there, I wouldn’t ACTUALLY make fun of anyone for something as silly as card game theory. But I feel it’s more of like…when all you need is credits, that’s great, but the corp is really the one in need of card advantage more than the runner, and in a way that lets them control the quality of the draw. In a vacuum, it could be said that being able to effectively gain a click for a credit when you install anything, is better than gaining a click for a card draw, only when you make a new server. However, given that cards like daily business show exist, and jackson howard gives you tremendous control in the quality of your cards, and in the inherent vulnerability of HQ, it seems to me that there are more situations where newer cards, would help where more credits, would not; especially as the runner has the capacity to gain more credits than the corp can, and that big expensive ice, actually doesn’t keep the runner out more if it’s in a remote, and the game can get skewed towards the runner fairly easily. This is even easier when their rig is easily set up, like crypsis, magnum opus. Add in denial cards, and even if you can afford to rez the cards you have, what you really need is even more cards at that point.

But yeah, I am actually not a jerk, that’s pretty much the important thing, sorry if I seemed that way.