THIS IS them treating Netrunner like one of their main products! The only line they make a bigger deal out of is the Star Wars stuff, because there’s a lot more money in that.
Until FFG decides to expand again, this is probably as “main” as it gets. I’m just glad they aren’t going full-on GW and disavowing the competitive scene entirely.
[quote=“kiv, post:15, topic:4364, full:true”]
Damon is already in the room watching as Lukas decides that Dedicated Technician Team might be overpowered if it cost 2 to trash. Better nerf it to 1 just to be sure, right?[/quote]
Hilariously, the nerf is worse than you posit in your hypothetical. It is absolutely insane to me that Dedicated Technician Team is a functional reprint, only MASSIVELY nerfed, to a truly laughable degree. For reference: http://www.netrunneronline.com/cards/chester-mix/. The original, equivalent card (upgrade that reduced install costs of ice protecting a specific server) had a trash cost of 3 (already absurdly better), rezzed for 0 (still going), and reduced the install costs of all ice installed to protect the server by 2, instead of merely 2 credits per turn (wow, just wow). Admittedly, Chester Mix was actually really good, but smacking it this hard with the suck stick was sorely misguided. Dedicated Technician Team is not even close to being playable.
Heck, when you even change one stat, you can heavily alter the playability of a card (Parasite wouldn’t be nearly as good if it installed for 3 credits; Eli at 4 to rez is a similar case), but altering three? Yikes (Paintbrush comes to mind). Account Siphon is a phenomenal card, but if it gave you 3 tags, only gave you 1 credit per credit stolen and cost a credit to play, it would be beyond horrible.
I really do appreciate the work that’s been done on Netrunner thus far by the design team, and there have been many instances of highly impressive card design far beyond any of my capabilities, but damn, if they don’t screw up royally with balance sometimes. That being said, Blackguard fully deserves to be almost 4 times as expensive as Desperado. I mean, the card would be completely broken at 10 to install!
I think FFG just used some example numbers for that presentation. I, and others, speculated that the numbers from this presentation meant they would pair every corp and runner faction together for a total of 12 big boxes and 660 cards. Those, plus the core set, would be 773 and then 7 cycles would round the card pool out at 1,613 cards. But Data and Destiny has the “neutral” runner factions so that idea is out the window probably.
Tangent point: Given FFGs current record of printing/reprinting older sets it would be nice for them to start rotation sooner. At some point the entire legal card pool is going to be Genesis through the 2 cycles after Mumbad which means a person trying to get into the game a couple years from now is going to have to buy 42 data packs, 2-3 core sets, and probably 4 big boxes. As fun as it would be to have a massive card pool, that just doesn’t seem like the best idea given FFGs printing capabilities.
i mean that’s all well and good and very likely what happened, but the post i quoted said that, based on the numbers, we are definitely getting nothing else, and my post was that the numbers didn’t add up.
Right and I agree with you that the numbers don’t add up. I was just saying that given D&D not being a NBN-Shaper pairing , it probably means that the rotation presentation picked some easy numbers to help get the idea across to people.
I think there will definitely still be big boxes—all of FFG’s other LCGs continue to get big boxes after cycles for a good long time; also, if they drop one of the two formats like with CoC, they’ve shown a preference for dropping the cycles and just continuing on with the deluxe boxes.
I’m also not too concerned with Lukas rotating out of Netrunner for a bit. Man’s gotta have some new stuff to work on for a while, right? :). I’m pretty stoked with how the Mumbad cycle is looking, theme-wise :).
Also in re: playtesting—I think there were more than a couple dozen playtesters before the infinite leak mill started ;). I’ve heard that really tightened the pool size down, so: thanks a lot, rando leaker jerks! You’ve made it such that fewer active players get to help make the game better! I don’t think there’s remuneration even in FFG credit.
Don’t think AgoT continued to receive boxes but I could be wrong.
From what I understand, some FFG games continue to get boxes, but others get cycles, so I guess it depends. Probably on what they think will be the most profitable (reasonable).
Regarding the leaks that @hypomodern mentioned, it’s really baffling to me that playtesters would even do something like that. You already get benefits - first looks at new cards, your opinion having actual sway within the company, FFG credit, and you presumably have to sign a non-disclosure agreement (I wouldn’t know, but this would seem to basic protocol), so you even have stuff to lose outside of the benefits. If you’re considered an actual employee if FFG, you could even consider the action leaking corporate secrets (minor secrets, but secrets nonetheless). Considering the perks, taking the risk to leak information for virtually no benefit (unless you want to count street cred, assuming someone believes you when you come out and say “Hey, I’m actually Snow-Jax guys!”), is just…confusing.
Maybe there’s a moral thing, like “F the Corp, I’m gonna support my fellow gamers with some info”?
[quote=“hypomodern, post:26, topic:4364, full:true”]I don’t think there’s remuneration even in FFG credit.
[/quote]
Even without some type of compensation, I bet FFG could have a ton of testers in a heartbeat if they wanted to.
As far as the leaks things go, only spoiler-ken was a playtester I believe. Snow-jax supposedly works in some shipping warehouse.
Agreed 1000%. It’s the same with Bethesda Softworks and only having 5 voice actors for the entire game of Skyrim. Bro, I’ll voice-act for you! Send me the script. You don’t even have to pay me, just stick my name in the credits.
Completely baffling, and borderline unacceptable.
As someone who coordinated the entire playtesting effort for a published product, I learned that it’s better to have 20 solid testers than 2500 random ones. You reduce the amount of chaff that you personally have to sift through, and the large random groups have a lot of redundancy in their feedback (catching the same basic/elementary thing you missed). Another problem is that with many playtesters, you’re always getting pulled in many different directions simultaneously (and a lot of people will be miffed no matter what you choose), and it makes any sort of discussion complicated.
In the end, a small group of solid testers ends up producing a comparable amount of actionable testing output, and it’s easier to both manage and stay actively in contact with.
I think what @Danwarr was getting at was more along the lines of - “If they’re low on testers, it should be a simple thing for them to have as many as they like, pretty much regardless of the number.”
So if they have 20, let’s say (just to throw a number out), and they want 15 more, it doesn’t seem like it would be hard to find people willing - although the matter of signing them up (or what have you) might be a bit more complicated, but I assume they go enter the process of finding more knowing what that will entail.
Hopefully I’m not mis-representing what he meant.
It seems like FFG could use some redundant feedback for Netrunner on occasion. 
I agree that having a smaller group is better, but sometimes getting more opinions on why a player/consumer would or would, not play “X” card or use “X” product can be helpful.
This is correct. If they need more to help make the product better, they should do it. I really think FFG has something major in ANR but they don’t really seem like they want to capitalize on it sometimes.
I would love to hear some FFG playtesters stories about certain design decisions for cards. Things like Power Tap, or why “Rex” is strength 1 and “Lady” is strength 3, or Ireress at strength 2.
Off-topic, but you want good voice acting, not just some random schlubs reading the lines. I much prefer it if a game studio hires the professional actors it can afford, rather then just grabbing random guys off the internet to fill out the cast.
I agree. But I would rather have a few instances of poor voice acting than having the old homeless woman, in her old, slightly wavering from hunger homeless woman voice, then when I ask her a question, she instantly reverts to “dignified noblewoman” voice, because they didn’t bother to record the old homeless woman talking about that particular thing.
Seriously, this sort of thing happened in Oblivion all the time. And then in Skyrim half of everyone sounds like Jarl what’s-his-face that’s the Jarl of Whiterun.
You could also just have “open casting” be like these are the characters - “homeless woman”, “dignified and righteous jarl”, “sadistic and cackly noblewoman”, and then say “send us your best take of these lines for them, if we like you, we’ll ask you to do all their lines and you get your name in a video game! How awesome is that!”
And you’re right, we are completely off-topic, my apologies. This just always bothered me about Bethesda, because they’re usually so good, but in this area, they are just…not. I haven’t encountered any other big-name publishers with this same issue, and it’s not like there’s a noticeable problem with the voice acting from Rocksteady, or Rockstar, or Obsidian, or Bioware, or anyone else one could name.
EDIT: I’m sorry, I won’t bring this up again,
In my take, Lukas leaving the team would be fine (playtesters is the bigger factor here, I think). The only fear and concern right now in 2015 for me is that, FFG will have less attention on ANR and more for their upcoming LCG which is AGOT 2. Can we have a new thread for this?
Oh, definitely. Like I said, before all the leaks started, I believe the playtest group was much larger. It’s not a question of them struggling to find playtesters—they have exactly as many playtesters as they think they can manage :).
Ah, ok. AGoT looks like each faction got their own box. Perhaps that will be the model for netrunner, too, though they’ve been doubling up the factions in the boxes—so perhaps four more deluxes after D&D?
It’s hard to say what the model for the deluxe expansions will be just based off of FFG past practice since all of their other titles seem to operate differently. For example AGoT had one deluxe per faction. LoTR has a deluxe at the start of every cycle. Call of Cthulhu only receives deluxe expansions. All of the other LCG’s are too new into their life cycle (Netrunner, Star Wars, Conquest) , or are dead (warhammer invasion) to infer.
Your counting skills have failed you.
Don’t think that’s going to be an issue. Agot 2 is almost entirely driven by Nate French, who has never been heavily involved in netrunner