I think things sometimes read differently to how they were meant when they were written. I think the discussion was generally fine, but started to get a little personal. Lets get back on topic, and not worry about who said what to whom. I think D1en was correct that this argument in particular has started to get a little circular.
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Itâs the chicken & egg to me, I wonder who would have won worlds if etr / val gameplans would not have been that much copied.
etf foodcoat / val dlr are 50-50 I guess, and win vs most mainstream gameplans. But I think those 2 decks have problems vs some other plans.
So, if those 2 decks would have been meta called instead of being picked, I think you could have more spread in top 16 (since those metacalls are not platinium strong aswell) - hence what I call chicken & egg.
I have not disagreed with your observation that this worlds was more diverse than last; Iâve not looked into it.
I do not believe that game balance falls purely on represented IDs, nor have I made that claim. It is, however, an easily available measure of diversity when complete decklists are harder to find.
I am simply observing, that from the perspective of marketing an activity to outside viewers (rather than the perspective of the pilots who operate at that level), I feel that the level of diversity is somewhat low, and a potential barrier.
Let my try making the same point from a different perspective, by way of analogy.
I loved Firefly (the short-lived scifi series). There are a ton of fans who love the show, which in my opinion was very strong. It failed anyway. At the end of the day, the producers could not explain to network executives or to the general public why the show was worth keeping. The show did not fall into a well established niche, and breaking new ground is hard. The advertising strategy failed, and viewer levels did not rise fast enough.
So, when trying to move Netrunner into the public eye, the perspective to worry about here is not those of the top players who appreciate the subtleties between Kate variants that differ only by three cards. Itâs the perspective of the guys who stream this stuff, the advertisers who fund them, and the viewers whoâs appreciation of the game is less nuanced.
And they, in my opinion, would rightly wonder why more than half the top corp decks, and a third of the top runner decks, looked exactly the same (to them).
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I can apologize to my insensitive statement. I did take it personally, as Iâve come to hear repetitive talks about how this Worlds was not diverse once again, and it was only a set amount of IDâs which say dominant, and the game feels horribly imbalanced.
But I also feel itâs offensive to continue and talk as if you know whatâs going on in the state of the game, when youâre not a first hand component at the competition. I donât think you realize how much happens and changes once you step into Minnesota, and converse with players. You start talking with others on what they perceive to be strong, and calculate odds of certain match ups. You size up your strategy against others, and ultimately can push your thought process off playing something. I know this to be true of many players.
This year felt different. 2014 was the year of Fast Advance, and it was everyone worrying about how fast they could move around it. A few decks that played off the beat slipped through, as evident with RP winning Worlds. Getting siphoned trained by Andromeda was your biggeset hurdle, and PPVP Kate just started.
2015, we had to worry about so many vectors of losing. Whether it be FA, dying to Haarpichord, encountering Hinkesâ terrifying IG, Blue Sun Glacier, HB:EtF Glacier, HB Media Blitz FA, NEH Butchershop, Weyland Core Set Shutdown for 7.
Then Runner is filled with Noise Mill, DLR Val, Good Stuff Val, Reg Ass MaxX, PPVP Kate, Cerberus Leela, Faust Gabe, Novelist Hayley, the list goes on.
So to sit there, merely observe and say that the World didnât offer anything unique and that only the top 16 matters, is quite disrespectful to all the efforts of 269 participants this year. I can say that the top 64 players had every chance of making it in, it all came down if they made the right call as to what archetype their opponent was playing.
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I do not, as a general rule, hit first. But I do not hesitate to hit back. If you point to any post of mine where I am rude to someone before they are rude to me, or to another, then I will gladly apologize to that person.
But letting that kind of behavior slide only encourages it. I refuse to be a soft target.
I gratefully accept your apology, and freely admit that I lack your level of knowledge and expertise in the game. I intended no criticism of any of the players at worlds, and understand that it can be frustrating to here the same (often uninformed) arguments again and again.
Hopefully my earlier post will have clarified why I felt that the âheadlineâ diversity was important from the perspective of e-sport.
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Well looking at Leagueâs community this thread seems to be making us more like esports every post 
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Truth. The cut was a razorâs edge, and matchups were more important than ever. @Cerberus noted that he had to sweep out after going 6-4, and he did, mainly in part (outside of being a beast of a player) to facing all yellow Corps, which he was teched against.
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If you could do me one kindness then in the future as a observer; do further research.
The brunt of my frustration is the often, quick, uninformed, lack of research, observation.
Starcraft was interesting because each faction had multiple winning
strategies with their own strengths and weaknesses. Netrunner has far
fewer of those winning strategies.
This is your opening point. You mention that is easy to look at IDâs as a easily available measure of diversity when decklists are harder to find. Yet I provided you with a resource where not only does it provide statistics, it has linked decklists for the majority of the top 64 players in the World. Upon further dive and comparison to Worlds 2014, I can guarantee you there is double the amount of strategies to win, if not more.
Did you understand that lots of PPVP Kateâs cut Sharpshooter and Deus Ex this year? Which lead to Assassin being a good ICE to play? Did you understand the impact of GFI in deck building and agenda scoring options? How about the prevalence of Clot, and how NEH had to combat that with CVS and Shipment from SanSan? And speaking of CVS, how it hurt Noise matchups and Hivemind Megadig Medium builds? How about everyone who finally arrived at Worlds, fearing 24/7 News Cycle, slotted two Plascretes? Were you aware of these matters?
What Iâm trying to drive at here, is there is more diversity than you think, and it doesnât rest solely on IDâs. To merely state that as a âobserverâ hurts the game more than you ever think it helps. When I visit my LGS and have to debate with locals, why the meta wasnât diverse, my first question I ask is âwhy do you think so?â The rebuttal is more often than not, a mere observation. This observation turns into âtruthâ, because more and more people talk as such, and a hive mind is committed. Do you understand now, why it riled me up?
So, when trying to move Netrunner into the public eye, the
perspective to worry about here is not those of the top players who
appreciate the subtleties between Kate variants that differ only by
three cards. Itâs the perspective of the guys who stream this stuff, the
advertisers who fund them, and the viewers whoâs appreciation of the
game is less nuanced.
And they, in my opinion, would rightly wonder why more than half the
top corp decks, and a third of the top runner decks, looked exactly the
same (to them).
This is your follow up post to your previous point. Iâm not going to point out how contradictory this is to your initial post, which talks about the current balance of the game, and where this talks about how to market the game as a Esports, but Iâll dive into this.
Your example is clear, I can relate and understand. But have you seen the content we provide at Stimhack? The SSCI and PSI Games are prime examples of how we attempt to bring varied matchups on stream for viewers to watch and generate excitement. We write articles and reports from Worlds, as to present a better understanding of the experience. The same way Starcraft started from its roots on Youtube, with Day9 creating engaging content and streams that helped players, itâs what we strive to do here. The growth of the community will ultimately fall on well, the community. We canât rely on FFG in the current moment; itâs apparent in their efforts.
Iâll apologize again, because Iâm known to be aggressive once I get passionate about something. Just be mindful what your simple observations, lend to the grand scheme of things.
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You are clearly an expert in your field, and I am not. Nor do I pretend to be. But if you need to be an expert to appreciate high level Netrunner play then this game will never be an e-sport.
Think of actual sport. How many of the fans are themselves elite athletes, able to truely understand the efforts of the players that they watch? A miniscule percentage. But they can appreciate enough, get caught up enough in the action, that they spend time and money to follow along.
The cursory viewer IS the market. The headline is what people look at when deciding whether or not to read the article.
Now, you may feel that Netrunner still has enough diversity to cater to the more casual viewer and thus generate the audience and revenue that a commercial enterprise requires. We must agree to disagree on that point. But I would respectfully suggest that if your view is based on your personal experiences at Worlds, you are coming from a very, very different place than the target viewer, and are not best qualified to judge what the more casual, less informed, less skilled player will or will not find sufficiently diverse.
You are simply not the target audience. You are the athlete.
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At te level of depth youâre talking about, the most popular sport in the us contains no diversity of strategy (football). Every team passes and runs some amount. As you get more into it the strategy gets pretty complicated, but thereâs a pretty high overheaD on understanding whatâs going on. Yet itâs still massively popular.
What sport or esport are you using as a reference for why superficial diversity is important as something for esports growth?
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I donât think sports is a really good comparison because most school systems promote these sports with their school budgets. Youâre talking about a level of support that esports would dream of and generally never obtain unless there was a massive change in the prevailing culture. In these cases, the cursory viewer has more direct experience with the sport because itâs been around them over their whole life.
This argument is also tangential to your original argument about game balance and variety. If the average viewer canât appreciate the nuance of a strategy, then the strategic variety is similarly of little value to them. What do these cursory viewers value? Camaraderie, surprising performances, and displays of talent. These things could still be available to Netrunner even if the general population doesnât understand the game at elite-player levels.
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I think the thing that makes it easy to watch is the abstraction is simple.
Starcraft: Destroy the other playersâ base.
MOBAs: Destroy the other playersâ base.
Handegg: Ball goes to other side of field.
Netrunner: Corporation tries to advance their agendas, Runner tries to steal them.
Notice the difference? Fundamentally, and with the highest level of abstraction, Netrunner has more to explain before you can even start to understand. âDestroy the other playersâ baseâ is a simple concept, easily understood, even though there is in fact a lot of depth and strategy to it, the core concept is quickly communicated, and you can watch pretty lights while you start to figure out whatâs going on. With Netrunner⌠You have to explain how the Corp can score, and how the Runner can score, and during this explanation, youâre watching a bunch of cards move around on a table.
To be fair, MtG has this same problem. They do have a simple premise though: Reduce opponentâs life to 0. You do still have to explain how thatâs done, and you only have a bunch of cards moving around to watch while youâre trying to figure it out. The only reason that, say, Poker gets away with having a bunch of cards moving around, is that itâs so widespread that everyone knows the basic rules behind it.
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Comparing IDs to the factions simply isnât right. They are not the same. If you would compare faction against faction you might have a point, but on the other hand, netrunner is constantly evolving, while starcraft is more static.
Also, you canât really tweak a card game in the same vein as you do with a digital game. A game tweak in netrunner would be card erratas and banlists. If you do that to much it becomes a mess. You canât simply apply digital solutions to an analog game.
Another thing you canât really capture in netrunner is the action on screen. Seeing a match of starcraft is far flashier than a match of netrunner. You should compare netrunner with more similar things, like MTG, poker, chess etc.
Was thinking about that. Handegg and Hockey broadcasts do something so that extra info appears on the screen, like the 1st down line, or where the puck is⌠Is that possible for streamers of live matches?
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Dien is the athlete AND the commentator, and is damned good at both. He was explaining to you why youâre wrong. If youâre not able to accept the facts heâs presenting, thatâs on you, and not him. You donât need to know all of the subtle nuances of the game to grasp that the format is not Kate vs etf. That you assume casual netrunner fans are as ignorant and obstinate as you is laughable.
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IMO the title of the article and in turn this thread is a bit problematic. It is relatively unclear what the OP was intending to say. Will ANR continue to build its community, eclipsing the intentions of its developing company? I think that process is already underway. That was what the article meant to conclude IMO. Will ANR develop into a phenomenon on par with e-sports? I highly doubt it. Honestly our discussion here has been stimulating, and gone beyond the scope and aims of the original article which lacked focus and clarity.
I would like to add one thing. It was mentioned that MOBAs have a more diverse meta/field of representation than ANR. I think that is both a bold claim and an unfair one. In LoL, nothing close to the entire hero pool can be used at any given time. There are always champions who are under the curve. The LoL meta is generally homogenized, with a splash of pocket picks. For those unfamiliar, pocket picks are champions that come out from time to time as surprise picks. They are typically underplayed or below curve, but picked because they have an advantage against the enemy composition or in a specific match-up. It also generally holds that a player on the pocketing team has significant experience with the pocket pick, from past metas and/or personal favoritism. I think the LoL model of homogeneity supplemented by pocket picks correlates well with the nature of the ANR meta. In the analogy, the champion you pick is replaced by the deck you bring to a tournament.
Shaking up the meta is much easier in a video game. You can patch the entire game, readjusting numbers and mechanics. This is obviously impossible with a card game. There is no elegant way to hot fix a LCG. MTG uses an aggressive rotation model and exhaustive playtesting. FFG cannot use the former method; it goes against their philosophy behind the LCG format. They donât have the resources to do the latter, and even if they did, it is inevitable that certain decks would be above the curve. Metas in tabletop games are not nearly as liquid and dynamic as those in video games. Tabletop games are slower in every way: development, distribution, and practice.
Card erratas are a clusterpuck, and I agree they should never be used. However, banlists work in an analog game pretty similarly to how they work in a digital game, especially in an era where we have the internet available to communicate them as soon as they are decided upon. Once you read something is banned, you take it out of your decks, put it in a toploader, and donât bring it anymore. Takes 20 seconds for each player instead of 0 seconds like when a unit/item/digicard is banned, but the more profound impact of playing without that card is very similar.
An awful lot of the time, when digital games exercise their power to âerrataâ something, they use it to perform an operation rather similar to banning, too. They frequently nerf the object so hard it has no competitive use anymore.
Netrunner is four years old at this point and in most of the world tournament attendance is less than 30 people per event. Talking about âProfessional Esportsâ seems extremely naĂŽve to me.
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A little over three years old, but, whoâs counting.
I think weâre all missing the primary point of the article, in that the King of Servers, and the guy who ran it, by association, was pretty freaking awesome.
Can we all just get along, and acknowledge that fact?
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