Announced as the winner of the plugged-in tour voting. Curious on everyone’s impressions of the card.
Most chatter on the forums indicate that voters just didn’t want a “game-breaking” identity like the collective. What are all your thoughts?
I think a lot of people were too hasty in saying that The Collective would be broken or game-breaking. It’s hard to know what the card pool or the meta would look like when the card would have come out, which would have been at least a year from now. Laramy Fisk’s ability is interesting and all, but is not nearly as unique or different as The Collective.
I voted for The Collective, and am sad/frustrated when people say they would have been broken, when they only based their conclusion on games using the current card pool.
Next to the cardpool argument. Was it ever confirmed what “same action” means? I still don’t know. If that’s not clear how can you ever say that it is game breaking or not?
The cardpool argument doesn’t really apply to be honest.
Yes, The Collective were OP in the current environment but an ability like that doesn’t get any worse with new cards. The Collective needed pegging back and that only happens if:
- Shapers get shafted such that all their in-faction cards are weak relative to Crim / Anarch.
- The Corp get cards which punish the runner in some way; which in this case would need to be penalising the repeated actions or exploiting the ID keywords. Either of those solutions would then be meta inclusions purely to spite The Collective, which in my opinion is not good for the game.
I’m sure there would be creative and subtle ways to reel them back in, but it’s much easier to boost a weak identity than tame a strong one.
I’m actually quite excited for Fisk, the hush talk from the play-testers has been that there are some cool cards coming out for him.
I really don’t think you know what you’re saying. I don’t think there was anything too hasty about it. If you analyze the card, it really just affords an insanely unfair advantage. Through testing, this advantage was made apparent. Unlike it may appear at first, it isn’t a sophisticated card at all. It’s not like you have to do backflips to tap into its power. It is actually pretty straight forward and simply overpowered.
It is a relief to see that Laramy Fisk won, although I wish it was actually an identity I had intentions to play. I would’ve preferred something between Fisk and the Collective, something stronger than Fisk and interesting but not as ridiculous as The Collective.
I immediately liked Laramy Fisk better because it simply forces you to think more.
It’s not an ability that is immediately usable or understandable, as in you can think at a thousand occasions in which it could be useful… it’s more like food for thoughts. And I think that a game like Netrunner needs more cards that increase the complexity without “going around the rules” (as in basically adding a Click à la The Collective).
Complexity should also mean more options and more possibilities in deck building, leading to new kind of decks, which will make more difficult to guess what weapons the Runner might have.
i think without octgn the collective would have won. a lot of people i talked to were not picking fisk because they liked him but because they felt they needed to “save” netrunner from the developers thanks to the sky is falling bgg thread… whatever. im not playing fisk anyways unless some sort of format rotates gabe and andy out.
For me, i am looking foward to Fisk, gabe and andy are EZ-mode.
Time for crim to do it tuff!
Let’s be constructive here.
I agree with you in that I would have rather had something between Fisk and Collective in terms of power level. But I guess we differ in the fact that you would rather have something that relies on cards designed for him to operate, where I would rather have something that’s independently good.
Also, someone on reddit said it better than I could, “I feel like most of the votes for Fisk were votes against trust in FFG’s design.” While FFG left the vote up to us, they wouldn’t have taken the game in a direction where there would be a huge tip in the power balance, even if Collective had won.
Finally, I think Laramy Fisk looks like the biggest douchebag in the world, just personal opinion there.
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I think it’s better to have cards designed for you to operate than to need cards to be designed against you to bring you back into line.
That sort of comment is just ridiculous. As the card pool changes and the relative power balance of identities changes you need to adapt or get left behind.
I am excited to see Laramy Fisk! I think he has a cool ability that will be be fun to play around with. His ability is something that isn’t really something that can be found in nettrunner right now, and I am anxious to try out a criminal with a very different playstyle!
With so many people excited about Fisk’s ability, I’m sure we’ll see plenty of it once it’s released right?
Personally, I’m doubtful this will happen - and a little bitter. Especially if my suspicion turns out to be correct and it’s another ID that will rarely see play.
I’d also prefer if Fisk won on its own merits and not on the back of a scare campaign against The Collective.
This is a bit of a naive attitude. IDs can’t simply keep getting better and better - that’s power creep and is what the designers are desperately trying to avoid. They have to make IDs do new things, which will inevitably require interaction with as yet unseen cards. It would not surprise me to see Fisk being able to exploit the alternate runner win condition by making the corp draw too much. Similarly agendas will collect in in HQ quicker than the Corp can deal with them, which increases the power of HQ interface, Raymond Flint etc. He could actually be an interesting card even in the current card pool.
I’m not asking for a better ID. I’m asking for a sidegrade.
Laramy Fisk is never going to seriously challenge Gabe or Andromeda unless there is a whole box of broken Crim cards that Gabe and Andromeda can’t use and Fisk can.
On the other hand, The Collective would have been an interesting and competitive sidegrade to current Shaper IDs.
I actually do consider Fisk’s ability more powerful than what Gabe currently does. Sure, the extra money is great and lets you play very aggressive, but Fisk’s ability makes running HQ better. It comboes nicely with cards like indexing and I think it might actually allow to pressure R&D and HQ at the same time.