MNGA - Rolling Ban-List Discussion

Errata is justified in some cases; cards like WNP have something important to add to the game, and eliminating them would be a greater loss than the substantial increase in complexity and inconvenience that errata (or even reprints) bring. But nobody says “wow, Sifr and Temujin open up the design space in such interesting ways; if only they were weaker”

Netrunner is full of cards that are janky and not really part of tier 1 decks. Like Blackguard. While in a perfect world every card would be useful and we’d be faced with infinite choice for good decks, that’s impossible. But a world where we have no janky cards and people can’t come up with weird and unusual but inconsistent decks would suck as well. Sifr at 11 is like Blackguard. Something Janky but not consistent. Building a deck around it would be possible but at a huge opportunity cost, thus, jank.

The main problem with Temujin is its so good out of faction. I really don’t think making it 3 influence makes it worse, just worse for Anarch and Shaper.

Astroscript’s errata is entirely in deck-building, and WNP/MoH are the most minor errata you could make to functionally change it (literally a small diamond next to the name). Adjusting the actual numbers on them to make Temujin a balanced card is super unwieldy and nowhere near the same thing.

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To be fair, an extra pip of influence on Temujin isn’t that much different from the unique symbol. And it has the advantage that it’s mostly affects deckbuilding unlike the unique symbol. The other suggestions of changing costs seem unrealistic.

The biggest strike is that extra influence is so close to the MWL that it hardly has a chance to be adopted by FFG. And there not much reason to consider it for fan-made lists; just another balancing system that’s slightly different.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any chance that costs get changed on cards. I would love it if FFG switched to a system where each datapack contained 20 new cards and 1-2 ‘fixed’ versions of older cards, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, and something like SIFR moving from 5 -> 11 is just not going to happen online.

Random observation: People advocating for hostile infrastructure to be banned should note that we’ll be seeing a lot of apocalypse if that ever happens.

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I strongly doubt that. The reason we’re not seeing alot of apocalypse right now isn’t Hostile Infrastructure. Apart from that, DDOS and Blackmail both being on the banlist makes pulling off an apocalypse way harder.

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I think @kwind is correct if we’re talking about how runners would deal with prison type or complete asset spam decks. Without Hostile, Apoc is simply the best way to deal with a deck that runs little ice and tons of annoying assets.

Aside from a meta where corps run all prison or asset spam decks though, you’re right that Apoc would still be tricky to use without HI in play. Against traditional decks, Apoc will get the most value after the corp rezzes a lot of ice, cards in remotes, etc. It also has a less impactful drawback if you’ve been able to get by without building up your board state, using only cards like ddos, blackmail, etc. That’s a tough balance to strike, as the more things the corp rezzes, the more you get behind if you’re not also developing your board. This tough balance plus the influence cost of Apoc means that not all runners want it in a meta where corps pack ice. I think :grinning:

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Anyone who thinks that the current meta is good for the game of Netrunner is delusional. We’ve already lost a few players due to it in our local area and we’re going to lose more before Boggs fixes it.

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Ehhh… I dunno, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to just always remember that a card costs a different amount than the printed value.

(Lookin’ at you, Queen’s Gambit from Worlds Champion deck.)

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Apocalypse Kate was one of the better decks from SCs through regionals last year and matched up very well with glacier, with disposable breakers such as lady and sharpshooter helping the runner complete just enough successful runs to bring about the end of days.

Apocalypse Maxx featuring eater/keyhole/account siphon was probably the second-best runner deck during SCs last year behind Dumblefork, although it did typically get a lot of mileage out of DDOS.

I think the rise of IG with built-in anti-apocalypse tech is the main reason those builds went away (HI also hurts keyhole). We’ve seen nothing but a decline in glacier since Flashpoint dropped, so I don’t think big stacks of ice are giving people pause.

I’m not necessarily saying losing HI would lead to a terrible meta, just that there are side effects to consider.

There are always Kwind, that’s why we are playtesting this little project. We’re trying to make a better game with as few changes as possible, and if you think Apoc is a problem i’d like you to help with trying to abuse it in this ‘format’ if you have the time. Personally i don’t think it is just yet, there are a bunch of other counters (although the card in itself is a little… difficult to evaluate).

Sifr would open the design space if it would cost 3-4 inf.

Anarch = +1 inf
Priced ok in Anarchs = +0 inf
Card advantage = +1 inf x evaluated card advantage (I’d say x 3).

It should cost 4 inf.

It’s strange stupid that it’s almost the best MU / inf card.

MWLed, of course.

What would happen is this console would be Anarch’s Desperado - I don’t know what to choose between the two if I’m Criminal actually.

About Temujin, I’m sorry but I think the card is right. There’s ways to make +8 a turn for 1 inf, without any risks, and a 2c barrier.

I can’t help but think Jnet is part of the problem and also a way to mitigate some of the problematic aspects of the metagame.

  • I think it’s very likely that the metagame is more toxic on Jnet than it is in semi-casual store/pub/home play. (Whether it is balanced is a different issue than whether it is toxic, I think.) The sheer number of games you can get through in a very short time tends to imply frequency of certain events or metagame decisions which you don’t see in-store. I have literally sat down to play online and gotten three or four PU prison opponents in a row. I have to wonder, who are these people, what are eaglesword77 and xKillBrox thinking and are they in the right hobby?
  • The casual lobby is a bit of a mess. I think we could more easily come up with a way of organizing online matchmaking than we could organize a list of cards we all agree on lol. I think if you address the fact that perceived balance is more about player goals (“I want to have fun and I respect my opponent’s time, skill level, and desire to play a wide-open game” vs “I ask that you respect the fact that my choice to play something you consider to be unfun represents my enjoyment of the game.”)
  • I think that, at this level, organizing players before organizing specific cards would be a more achievable goal, and subsequent discussions about community-generated watch, restricted, and ban lists could take place.
  • FFG won’t do anything to make the game more fun based on a toxicity level that manifests primarily in online play. What they might do—and their silence is becoming deafening—is attempt to rebalance based on available data collected at sanctioned events (or Damon’s assertion that the MWL was also for cards that “restricted the design space”). Of course the metagame has moved on, and anyway many of the problematic cards/decks aren’t winning tournaments necessarily, they just happen to be the most awful to play against. So what we would get is more rebalancing around NBN and Anarch which, y’know, worked great.

The counter-argument to addressing online matchmaking is that the community is not large enough to support any fragmentation into more codified “casual” and “competitive” camps for online play. To that I would respond by asking how small the community would need to shrink before you would consider it an option?

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I’ve got nothing but love for Jnet.

It’s an incredible service the people who run the site provide for free, and it seems to me that keeping up with it must be a huge amount of work. If anything ever happened to Jnet, it would be horrible for the health of the overall game because there are so many places where the playerbase isn’t big enough to keep people interested on its own.

The point you make that I agree with is that the casual lobby can be confusing. I feel like every time I try to play some jank, I get matched up against IG prison or CTM or something. Then if I get a little frustrated and break out something tier 1, I get someone playing Nasir or the professor and feel bad. I usually just play in competitive now unless I can’t get a game there because I figure at least everyone is on the same page.

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Yeah I didn’t mean there was anything about Jnet itself that was creating a bad metagame, I just meant it creates a very skewed impression of the game for whatever reason, and maybe it could help us all get what we’re looking for rather than looking to FFG for changes they’re unwilling to make (and that wouldn’t suit everyone anyway).

Some small new features or UX tweaks could go a long way to easing the tension in the community and around the MWL—and I’d gladly pay to support their development, as I’m sure would many others. I wonder if implementing a feature where, when you join the lobby you put in your ID and can choose to accept or silently decline matchups without hurting feelings? Or maybe you put in your likes and dislikes like a dating site lol…? “Likes: Aesop’s Pawnshop, long walks on the beach. Dislikes: Hostile Infrastructure, salty people.”

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Sometimes it’s hard to stomach more than one prison deck in a session. Maybe, title it as “no prison plzthx”?

Sometimes, I feel at the mercy of the jnet casual lobby RNG. But, we do have a little bit of agency in the game title.

[quote=“CJFM, post:150, topic:8629, full:true”]Anyone who thinks that the current meta is good for the game of Netrunner is delusional. We’ve already lost a few players due to it in our local area and we’re going to lose more before Boggs fixes it.
[/quote]
Sadly, many players think people “just like to complain” or “don’t want to learn new strategies”. The worst part is that many of these players will be the first to jump ship to L5R, meaning that not even them will stick with the game.

I’ve been on the verge of quitting the game twice and everytime I play I get a reminder why: I no longer have as much fun anymore. Everytime I play with or against Sifr, Whizzard gets a fast Temujin on me or I beat someone because they couldn’t keep up with Friends spam I cannot help but think “Why am I playing this?” This stuff not only isn’t what I liked so much in Netrunner in the first place but it actively undermines it by nullifying its main mechanics.

And I can’t help but think “What are the newbies thinking?”. I can play around all that crap, I can tech against Sifr and Boom and turn the tables on the metagame, but less experienced players can’t do that. For the vast majority of players DDoS Valencia or Dyper are literally unplayable matchups, not only they cannot win, they cannot even pretend to play because nothing they do matters. For them, these decks are a prolongued excercise in watching the other playing wank.

What I’m worried about is Boggs not being capable or allowed to fix the game. Sifr isn’t going to be fixed without a ban or functional errata and toning down power creep will require a pretty long list to be added to the MWL (Temujin, Beth, Aaron, Sensie…). My fear is that the game will limp along bleeding players until L5R or other game comes along and everyone leaves it.

The metagame of Jnet is significantly more toxic than it is in real life, for a couple reasons.

The first is that the most common decks in Jinteki are those that aim to win regardless of what the opponent does. DLR decks, Blackmail spam decks and Leela+Gang Sign are massively overrepresented there. You probably have never seen the later in real life, but on Jinteki it gives you a free win everytime the opponent is unlucky or flooded so it’s very popular.

The second is that people play in absurd, careless ways because if they win, that’s great and if not, all they have to do is ragequit and find another game. Hence people throw blind Siphons, don’t respect Komainus and if you play Targeted Marketing on a breaker or Temujin they start shooting Inside Jobs everywhere. The result is that games end up not being fun and decided by dumb luck.

As far as the casual lobby goes, the only difference is that in competitive you won’t find beginner decks. You certainly won’t see less DLR or Sifr.

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Lots of truth in here. I really do hope Boggs has mandate to fix these problems, otherwise there is little chance that new cards can ever solve the problems due to power-creep.

I noticed in his interview that he has taken to heart the problem with non-interaction. This seems like a hopeful first step. There was no mention about the power-creep problem cards however, or his willingness to solve problems post-release with bans/MWL. Judge is still out i guess.

Not sure it’s “good for the game”, but my local scene has been on a notable upswing and we’re hoping to gain more with the TD events.

#AllAnecdotesMatter

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