Overrepresention of a pair of IDs in the top 16 doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is bad, especially since Kate wasn’t the best performing ID and an ID underrepresented in the top 16 (NEH) ended up in the final. The issue isn’t whether there’s lack of strategic diversity but whether that effects the ability of netrunner to appeal to a mass audience, which I have argued it doesn’t.
Again, there are things to learn from other sports, but those sports don’t have a great variety of strategy that’s legible to the average player, and from my experience that’s not what appeals to them about those events.
But we are also looking at a single event. HB I would say hasn’t been having much success for the rest of the season and even though ppvp Kate has been strong this season, she didn’t dominate the field, just her faction (which is another problem). And if we look at top-4 at worlds, every faction is represented except for Weyland. I think it is important to look not only at IDs, but more at factions.
And no, starcraft isn’t a good analogy. Starcraft is a much more flashy, almost like a movie. 2 people playing cards will have a hard time be as interesting as 2 massive armies duking it out on a foreign planet. Starcraft is also a small investment, especially if you already have a gaming rig.
Your idea of an handicap isn’t that bad, but it isn’t easy to balance. Each time a new pack is out it can change. Unless, of course it is balancing itself on a single tournament.
If we were to expand on the idea of a handicap, how would we do it?
I think that the scoring is so low (a mere 6-7 points) that we shouldn’t mess with that. The other obvious possibilities are initial clicks, and initial credits.
How many extra starting credits would the Professor need to become viable? How does that change over time (as you rightly suggest it would)?
Perhaps the solution would be ongoing tracking based on tournament performance at events of a certain level? There would be a slight delay in responding to new cards, but the issue is self correcting. If tournament performance goes up, the handicap automatically starts going down.
It would require FFG (or someone else?) to track ‘sanctioned’ tournaments, but this is nothing that WotC hasn’t been doing for years.
Are you suggesting that the entire meta of the game has settled on Kate vs. ETF being the the top tier matchup, and that will never change? Hell, a few months ago it was Kate vs. RP, last Worlds it was Andy vs. NEH. This game is constantly changing due to new packs being released and new strategies being developed, so to say that Netrunner has passed some sort of “tipping point” because 11 of the top 16 IDs at Worlds 2015 were ETF is pretty shortsighted. Maybe it says something about the current meta, but to say that Netrunner is boned because of the results of one tournament seems silly to me. In fact, even before Kala Ghoda comes out, I expect there to be a meta shift in response to Worlds results of people developing decks that are better suited to deal with Foodcoats. That is how metagames work, and that will change what decks are on top.
There will always be a small set of “top tier” decks, but the decks that occupy those spots will always be changing from month to month with every set of cards that is released.
That’s a totally viable (and very creative) handicap. Search you deck for X cards and install them before the game starts. That would make playing a weak ID with silver bullet solutions very interesting.
Edit: Rather than a handicap, this feels more like a ‘weight class’ fix. Whereas a handicap really tries to fine tune things, you might find that with a fix like this you have 3 or so ‘weight classes’, and everyone in class X gets Y number of free installs. Weight classes could be reviewed periodically based on performance.
It’s really creative, and I can see a huge amount of strategy revolving around picking an ID in a lower weight class to grab combos or silver bullets, etc. The downside is that there is much more scope for a single card to seriously skew results.
[quote=“dodgepong, post:151, topic:6081”]
Are you suggesting that the entire meta of the game has settled on Kate vs. ETF being the the top tier matchup, and that will never change? Hell, a few months ago it was Kate vs. RP, last Worlds it was Andy vs. NEH. This game is constantly changing due to new packs being released and new strategies being developed, so to say that Netrunner has passed some sort of “tipping point” because 11 of the top 16 IDs at Worlds 2015 were ETF is pretty shortsighted. Maybe it says something about the current meta, but to say that Netrunner is boned because of the results of one tournament seems silly to me. In fact, even before Kala Ghoda comes out, I expect there to be a meta shift in response to Worlds results of people developing decks that are better suited to deal with Foodcoats. That is how metagames work, and that will change what decks are on top.
There will always be a small set of “top tier” decks, but the decks that occupy those spots will always be changing from month to month with every set of cards that is released[/quote]
I do not recall anyone suggesting that Netrunner is static and never changes. Not even those who feel that the current diversity is fine have suggested that Netrunner never has, or never will, suffer from balance issues. All we can do is put forward our opinion on the current state of the game… predictions regarding the future are merely guesses.
Starcraft is an insufficient example because balancing a field of 3 is far easier than balancing a field of 20+. A much better example (that has been brought up multiple times in this thread) is Street Fighter. A quick google shows the tournament spread at any given tournament, and there is always a clear leader and clear loser. I think more ID diversity is something to strive for, but of all the myriad things holding back Netrunner’s popular appeal, I feel like ID diversity is a minor contributor.
I don’t know enough about Street Fighter to dispute anything that you have said. Would I be right in thinking, however, that matches last much less than an hour (or whatever the current standard for Netrunner is)? If so, do you think that the longer match time might make diversity more important to Netrunner than to Street Fighter?
From a viewing perspective, I feel like sitting through a 30 min Kate v ETF match only to be confronted with another 30 min Kate v ETF match at the start of the next round might be a little more off-putting than if each of those games had only taken 3 minutes each.
Did this take place on the Worlds stream? I didn’t catch every game, but I don’t remember seeing back-to-back Kate v ETF matches. I can understand in the abstract if every match was the same IDs it might get old, but I don’t think that was the reality of that stream.
While I like a lot of your post, I only think it fair to point out that no one cares as much about Netrunner as we do. The majority of people I know play for the fun once a week and don’t watch streams, go to tournaments, chat in detail, or even come to this or other forums. We’re the over-excitable ones.
For sports and stuff there are fans who seem to give their very life and soul to the game without even getting near playing, much more it seems than some of this professionals.
That said, and in other news…
I don’t think the perceived lack of diversity in the top 16 impacted the appeal of the game. As someone at Worlds I can tell you from everything I was hearing Haarp 24/7 was the deck everyone was packing a couple of days before the event - so much so that everyone tech’d for it - but as the day of the games came close there was a distinct switch to HB. I think that applies more broadly than just the British contingent!
The runaway Runner story was how well Val did (in various incarnations), Minh MaxX, Whizzard (the Australian National Champ brought one as well as Timmy) and other Anarch decks rather than Kate. Noah’s Kate was described as Witchcraft by the UK Shaper experts, despite being not all that different from regular builds, but it was exciting to see a different style of play.
I think if you’re into the game, there is a lot of diversity there. Trying to artificially change this for a theoretical less-informed crowd sounds like crazy talk. Much like the Americans at one point discussing changing Football (soccer) to have more goals to make it more appealing. Turns out just having a team in the World Cup worked out well in that instance instead.
I watch eSports (Dota) and play Netrunner, and have barely any interest in watching Netrunner matches. I don’t think it’s anything to do with the diversity of the meta or complexity of the game.
It’s just not exciting to watch in comparison to other options. The majority of the stream time is watching one of the players shuffle their hand while deciding what to do, meanwhile the commentators frequently can’t even see both players’ hands so they’re guessing at what they drew. It’s slow and there’s a lot of downtime.
I think it’s better to compare NR to something like poker than to eSports. Most poker tournaments that are aired are edited to cut out many of the unexciting hands, because they understand the game isn’t always exciting enough to be shown unedited. I’m not suggesting that NR needs editing, but the nature of the game just doesn’t make it that great of a spectator sport.
Speaking of poker, I would kill to be able to have a table setup where there were hole/server cameras. Or at least some sort of graphic representation of the board state, exposed. It would be a monumental undertaking, sure, but I’d definitely watch that stream even if it was just another boring Kate vs EtF.
Just here to say that contemporary fighters typically have a much deeper top tier pool than 3-4 fighters. Specifically, The last few iterations of Street Fighter have done a great job have done a great job of maintaining a balanced, diverse meta even at highest levels.
Not being able to see information like players’ hands is definitely a barrier to offering insightful commentary. Very often in streamed/recorded games, I hear commentators say, “now why did he do that…?” and not because they’re not experienced with Netrunner or the metagame, but rather because it can be hard to follow along with the game state if you don’t have all the information. Good commentators get around this – Steven Wooley, for instance, is often heard saying things like, “if that’s an X, he’s in trouble; if it’s a Y, things are manageable” – but ultimately I think it does make it harder for spectators to follow along.
It will be more fun to watch tournament stream if you have a few people to root for.
I think we should try to get more good players to stream their octgn/jinteki games especially against some other great players to increase their popularity!
So far only @d1en and @mediohxcore are doing that in a somewhat regular level (and mostly playing against randos). We need more!!
I’ve heard this suggestion before, but I can’t think of a way to do it without glass tables, which are terrible surfaces for playing card games on.
Hand cams or camera positions that let people see hands more easily is more possible and is something I’ve attempted before and have plans to improve on in my casts. The main issue with them at the moment is that it just takes a lot of room around the table to set up a bunch of camera stands that people won’t knock over when they walk around.
Sorry if someone already brought it up as I’m just reading through the thread. I specifically remember when I was a kid that that ESPN had coverage of the MTG world championships on TV. Granted it was at like 2 AM and may have been ESPN 2 when it was just starting out, but the point is that some corporate executive who likely knew nothing about CCGs at some point thought that there would be commercial/wide appeal for something like that. It did a good job of building the excitement and interest even though I didn’t play MTG at that point. Obviously this has now all gone to Twitch and other live streaming, but at least we know it’s been done before.
The obvious option would be poker style pocket cams but no way would i want to lug around a table to use them. I suppose you could possibly pin a small camera on someones shirt but that could still be pretty awkward.
Fighting game coverage will always be near and dear to my heart as a spectator. Somehow the commentators always seem to find a way to tell their viewers that dynamic situations will happen and that there will always be upsets at the big events. Tier lists will be challenged and reevaluated because somebody in the room found some new set ups or tech traps for a previously assumed C tier character.
And last year’s upset, imo, was Jinteki RP and PE in the finals.
Also, as for the pocket cams, wotc uses their iPads to take pics of the players’ hand and update them overtime.
