Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea Core 2.0 blog post

Just eating my well earned helping of humble pie online for all to see… :slight_smile:

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Good article. I can always appreciate when someone is able to admit they were wrong with grace.

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I’m banking good will so that when I DO turn out to be right about something I can rub it in! :stuck_out_tongue:

Hm. The best point was that the Revised Core doesn’t really represent current strategies anymore… Before, strategies revolved around what was available in Core. Now, it won’t.

That’s both good and bad. Good, because now there’s a good reason to get newer packs… Bad, because the Core isn’t necessarily a good test for how much you’d like the full card pool.

I’m also not sure that this will make it harder to get people into the game, I sorta like the argument others were making that more x1’s makes the game more interesting for people to buy into.

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I agree with the blog post on this. What are the cards that will make people fall in love with a specific faction in the new core? In the old one, I’d say the standouts were probably account siphon, parasite, magnum opus, scorched earth, SanSan City Grid, and biotic labor. In the new one, we lose 4 of those, and maaaybe add one (assuming Punitive works in a Core-only environment). I don’t think that I would have been as hooked on Netrunner if my first experience had been the Revised Core.

One solution would have been to add the replacements for the key cards like parasite and siphon to the Revised Core as well, but let veteran players know they don’t have to purchase the new core as they can get the cards in cycle 8. I will admit that this is less elegant than only including cycle 1+2 cards though.

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That might have been interesting. I guess the best way to have done that would be to release the new core after cycle 8, so that existing players already had the cards. But maybe they felt that now was the time since a bunch of staples were leaving and they could save them.

I’m not sure I’m crazy about there being so many x1s personally. A lot of people were complaining how much of a waste of money a third copy of the original core set felt like since you were buying it only for 2 cards, but, let’s be honest, you could get buy with just 2 copies and the only detriment would be that your criminal decks would be a tiny bit less consistent. But with so many x1s in the new core you NEED 3 for a whole load of different decks, which means a higher minimum buy-in.

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Yeah, I think it’s a problem too. I get the explanation of the card spread and all, from the early days and the reignited threads and post with the new Core (although, I don’t buy the dollar values that Damon threw out in his explanation for creating a full playset Core, but I get the point).

I know Dork admins shut down the discussion/complaints for having to buy 3 and why not have a completion expansion. I’d be all for a completion expansion, and I never really heard a good reason why it’s not feasible. Here are the cards they would have to add to make it.

Runner

19 - Anarach
19 - Criminal
19 - Shaper
3 - Neutral

Runner Total: 60

Corp

18 - HB
18 - Weyland
18 - Jinteki
15 - NBN (weird that they NBN gets one less unique card)
6 - Neutral

Corp Total: 75

(numbers were added in my head very quickly, so I might have made a mistake)

The total cards come out to just a bit over the size of 2 data packs (2.25 data packs). They can easily package and sell for like $30 USD or less since it’s less cards than a Deluxe Expansion. Has anyone ever heard of a good logical explanation from anyone related to FFG (either in the early days or the now)? The only explanations are: somehow adding a new SKU is somehow very difficult and/or confusing, or that they don’t want to lose the opportunity to gouge players that want to be competitive.

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Practicing to be a Necromancer, are you? Trust me, that corpse is more trouble than it’s worth.

Uh… was that to me or one of the respondents?

Nice article. One quibble I have is that core set shaper now has test run, whereas core 1 had no program tutors. When I first started playing I was confused and a little put off by the fact that what I understood to be a central aspect of the faction was missing from the first anr product I bought.

I think that the flavor of each faction is nicely represented in core2, but I agree that the power level is overall lower: shutdown and fao give criminal a less direct way to attack corp econ, but econ post rotation will likely be weaker across the board, so that’s fine (if less exciting). The point is well made that core set establishes the baseline color pie, but it also needs to enable exciting high impact plays that get new players charged up.

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I’d imagine it’s directed at @tvaduva, since that argument is as old as time itself =P

Totally true, C&C was so core (ta-dum dish!) to shaper’s flavour that we all forget they had to splash for Special Orders in core! Of the runners I’d say only Criminals have really been hit hard, both in flavour and power level (I’m talking in a core-only environment exclusively). Shapers are improved, and Anarchs may have lost Parasite and Noise but they’ve gained Imp so they keep the theme of indiscriminate destruction. Though it has to be said, with San San gone there are hardly any good targets of expensive “must trash” assets. Will newbies realise that you can also use it on ice and operations you access off centrals?

For some reason the direct response on here has only been working about half the time. It was directed to tvaduva.

Sequential direct responses (like this one) doesn’t show up with “reply” indicators, although notifications still work. I think it’s by design.

To the original point, what I really asked, was for any known explanations from FFG on the completion pack. Pointing out that it’s been long discussed isn’t very useful, especially since I already admitted it. I’ve googled a bit and could not find anything (I didn’t find anywhere where it was discussed on Stimhack either, but the search isn’t very robust). All I found was people in the community speculating that it’s probably not a good business decision.

If the answer is FFG said it’s not going to happen. Or, that they won’t comment on it or evaded the question by pointing out how much value the players are getting by buying multiple. Then, that’s fine and further discussion/speculation doesn’t get us anywhere. Although, I do hope that a host of one of the podcasts will ask that question since it seems Damon has made the rounds a bit since the announcement, and maybe Boggs will as well in the near future.

FFG has never played ball and explained it one way or another, to the best of my knowledge. My previous point referenced the fact that the topic has been beat to death in the past, so there seems little value in bringing it up again.

That said, with a new lead designer shaking things up, maybe we could at the very least get an answer on the topic.

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Thanks! I hope we get answer too. I’ve been around a long time (since the middle of Genesis) and I’ve heard the debate within the community many times. But, I wasn’t sure if I missed an interview or social media post that addressed it. Especially since Damon recently addressed the long debated (and related) non-playset cards in Core topic with a fairly reasonable explanation.

They want to make more money by making people buy multiple copies. I personally think it hampers the game. The Gillette model is a tried and true business model and I think it would work in this case.

But even if they don’t want to up the production cost by a dollar, they could have easily added a tournament pack with the missing cards.

But there are other less obvious problems with the model. For one, you are paying extra for more packaging and transports. Another is they if there is a shortage, you might not be able to get a full play set before a tournament. Your flgs might need to stock up on more stock, which might further drive up the price.

I would say they are trading long-term profit for short-term profit. Who knows, if the profit were in the expansions, maybe organized play would have been prioritized.

I’m also concerned with the new decision they took with the increased number of 1x cards in core. I don’t think it’s a design decision, since it’s also the way they went with L5R, so it must be a business decision to get people to buy 3 cores. I have heard FFG employees in the past say that people were complaining about the fact that they were buying 3x cores for only a handful of cards, and they were trying to make the third core feel like less of a waste, but here’s the thing: the people who were complaining about this were the people who were already buying 3 cores and feeling ripped off. They’re the most hardcore players, the ones so concerned about being competitive they absolutely needed that third Desperado and San San to make their decks more consistent. You’ve already hooked those people, they bought in, you don’t need to pander to them.

Rather, they should be pandering to the legions of people who are only buying a single core set and treating it as a self-contained board game. I’ve been trying to play single core games lately, and I’m telling you, those people are not having a good time. The number of 1x cards makes single core decks absolutely terrible. They’re inconsistent, they’re impossible to build because there aren’t 3 copies of the cards you want to splash influence on, and they’re just a bad experience.
3x Core 2.0 makes for much better and more interesting decks than 3x Core 1.0, but single core 2.0, which is what most newbies will start with, is absolutely terrible, and fewer first time buyers will decide to spring for more cores, or for other datapacks, based on that experience.

I might have to write a short blog post about this once I’ve played more games.

The thing is, once you start asking questions like “does the frequency of this card provide the greatest possible consistency and splashability allowed by the deckbuilding rules,” you’re already miles away from the perspective of someone who buys a single core set and treats it as a self-contained board game.

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