Netrunner and Balance Part 2: Our Glorious Future

Account Siphon has been the core of most opressive Runner decks since the beginning of the game. It’s incredibly overrepresented, even at an influence cost of four and it’s so centralizing that one of the factions wouldn’t really be playable without it. I think the vast majority of all-time great Runner decks have centered around it or Parasite (Or around it AND Parasite), which puts it in a very worrysome position.

It also has that massive utility that makes a card suspect. It has been used in every single kind of deck imaginable even big rig decks played it to soften the impact of installing Magnum Opus. It’s certainly much more powerful and much more game-warping than some of the cards already on the MWL, like Desperado.

It’s also fairly suspect card from a design standpoint in that it enables uninteractive situations which are not very fun. Playing around the card itself is fun, but man, those games in which you are pummeled over and over by Siphon recursion are not fun.

But more than it being an overly powerful card, I just think it’s a mistake of design. As you say, it’s the centerpiece of Criminal, you cannot ban it without harming the faction too much. And that’s a problem, a whole faction should not rely so much on one card.

That said, I think that the card is fun to play around and players do have the tools to fight it (Improved economy, assets, Crisium, Targeted Marketing). I don’t think it’s much of a balance problem right now but it’s not a card I think would exist in better possible versions of the game.

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Siphon is… Pretty bad, yes, but to me a hypothetical run event that drains the corp and rewards the runner to some extent is mechanically and thematically appropriate. Perhaps a two-cost run event that simply drains five from the corp and gives two tags would have been better than giving the runner ten.

The underlying problem is recursion, whether it’s Blackmail recursion, Siphon recursion, asset recursion, or Parasite recursion. There have been enough signs that FFG understand it’s an issue but yet continue to commit the same design mistakes again and again with the same one-year lead time.

Friends in High Places was probably designed before Clone Suffrage Movement was even released, but I can’t imagine a world where someone didn’t say “wait a second, I think we’ve got a problematic interaction here” unless FFG staff don’t know their own card pool…

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I’d sooner ban False Echo than DDoS: I don’t think DDoS outside of Dyper warrants a ban.
Blackmail and Feedback Filter are dumb, but they’re a lower tier of dumbness than the other cards proposed for banning.
Here’s hoping FFG is willing to shake up the status quo.

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I’m not saying that banning siphon harms Criminal too much. I’m saying it makes them no longer Criminal. Just as Anarch’s theme is blowing shit up, Criminal’s theme is stealing things, and that requires them to have a powerful card which steals from the corporation. Their centerpiece card can’t be Temujin, it actually says on the card that it is not a criminal activity!

I have no problem with siphon, but if a lot of people do, here are some real solutions:

  1. MWL it (and take Desperado off)
  2. Ban it, but replace it with a different card with a similar effect (perhaps stealing a % of the corp’s credits, so that you could never siphon them to 0).
  3. Create a Netrunner 2.0 that replaces Criminal with a different faction.

But simply banning siphon and not replacing it or creating a new faction is just ruining a faction.

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I don’t think theme discussions really belong in a thread about balance, but apart from that I disagree completely. The only “stealing” cards I can think of are Siphon and Bank Job.

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The problem with siphon is its such positive feedback - a successful siphon sets you up for further ones. If criminals had cards that took credits from the corp to give the runner something other than straight credits back (points, accesses, connection installs) it’d be a lot better I feel. In addition siphon is so strong it crowds out any space for similar credit stealing effects.

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My biggest gripe with account siphon is the lack of creativity that very strong card has created for the game. Think about all the times a new card comes out and what’s the first thing people pair it with…account siphon. It’s been like that since day-1.

Criminal acts is not a real definition of the criminal faction (I know how that sounds). Anarchs commit criminal acts all the time in the cards, even shapers do thematically. The real difference is that criminals have cards that allow them to get away with their acts without being caught, and they commit those acts with the purpose of personal profit. The anarch faction (at least in principal…the cards don’t support it well) do it while being seen (so many anarch cards create or function off of tags).

Siphon works perfectly to set up that theme! Criminals siphon the corp, remove the tags and keep the money. Anarchs siphon the corp and proudly float the tags as a symbol of defiance against the corporations. They don’t even care if the corps close their accounts them next turn - they didn’t do it for the money anyway!

The non-siphon criminal econ cards are mostly the criminal taking side jobs unrelated to the conflict at hand - for instance, doing some bounty hunting or helping other corporations test their security has nothing to do with an actual conflict between Gabriel Santiago and Blue Sun. That’s fine as a way to build up some cash for the Big Heist (siphon), but the theme of Criminal shouldn’t be ‘they do a bunch of side jobs that don’t affect their opponent’.

It’s relevant to know which cards are the thematic core and main appeal of a faction because FFG doesn’t want to ban cards if it drives off a large percentage of their playerbase. Imagine that FFG had banned Scorch before Boom! came out - is a Weyland player going to take comfort in the fact that, by card count, Weyland’s theme was actually advanceable ice and not meat damage? No, they’re going to quit the game. The same thing would happen to Crim players if they ban siphon without a replacement.

If you look specifically at MaxX, and make allowances for all the ways she can do it (as in, mill+recur one of the pieces, click 1 inject, etc), the actual percentage is higher (it’s like 10-15% IIRC).

Yes, I agree that you are correct.

Even requiring a 3-card combo, just having more cards to work with is a hugely powerful ability. The math on MaxX makes the ID look completely bonkers compared to anything but Andy (who actually has slightly better odds).

The odds are definitely better in MaxX, since you have 8 card to work with (sort of). I’ll guess that the odds are a little higher than 10%, but definitely less than 14%.

Similarly for Andy I estimate a nearly 22% chance using an over-estimating calculation (that has even more error than the MaxX calculation). Andy only needs a 2-card combo in 9 cards, so she has the best chance of pulling it off. When you remember that she can mulligan all 9 of her cards (MaxX can only mull 5) her odds get really good, with a ceiling at 39%.

Please note that the calculations I did above over-simplified the problem in a way that will overestimate these probabilities. The error is small for low-probability events (~5% and under) but grows considerably as the probability increases (particularly above 10%). There are other problems with the MaxX calculation (2 of her 8 cards are in the heap, and it does matter which) that I am way too lazy to correct for.

agreed, it is thematic.

They can keep or ditch the card I just prefer it gone so that there’s more variety in the field. It seems like every other card that’s released, certainly ID’s, are first tried with AS. I prefer cards with strong effects that stimulate hard choices over cards that are “auto-includes”.

Did account siphon set a precedent? Have latter cards been printed that have the impact of an 11 credit swing and are spammable? If there had perhaps we would see people agonizing over including those cards or AS, but as it is it’s just: “i’m playing criminal so auto 3 AS” or “I want to build an anarch deck so I should really consider AS”. Hell even shapers sometimes.

There are lots of non-siphon criminal cards that attack the corporation, they just aren’t siphon so people don’t use them.

Ban siphon and bring back http://www.netrunneronline.com/cards/edited-shipping-manifests/

While I agree that Rumor Mill wasn’t the best design; it should really be more targeted. I also was not a fan of the 1.5+ year era from RP Glacier to Foodcoats, where I had be on my psi games to win consistently (but I do consider myself a fan of glacier). That’s all been discussed so far, so I won’t belabor it again.

What hasn’t been discussed is how the Corp meta would be if Rumor Mill didn’t exist and we still have all these extra recursion (FiHP, Preemptive Action) from the cycle, plus the better big ice. I’m not sure if Pol Op is enough to keep that under control.

I think the best solution is a way to deal with the runner threats with creative upgrades and ice. I’ve said it before in another thread, but how about an ice that can be rezzed at any time? That deals with both Blackmail and Dyper non-sense and you won’t have to use any extra slots.

Or, a better way to deal with runner’s currents on their turn? Maybe an a grid that can be trashed to play a current in HQ or Archives (or, something better than paying 3 (!) influence for TNNH)?

I think the main problem with balancing that FFG’s designers has is the 1-1.5 year lead time for releasing cards. I’m pretty sure they’ve been trying to make non-lethal tags and assets a thing from the beginning, so they sprinkle cards here and there, and the meta doesn’t move. Then, they get a critical mass and it becomes a NPE, and they don’t have an easy way to react to the meta besides MWL.

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So given they know this about their own lead times, the least they could do is try to address it when, inevitably a year later, they end up with Friends in High Places. Instead… silence.

I’d also argue they ought to have learned their lesson by now that recursion needs to be toned down. This should have been abundantly clear long before Friends in High Places was ever a glimmer in Damon’s eye.

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Re: Psi games, Caprices, and general annoyance with its overabundance

I’m pretty sure that there are enough safeguards in place now that Rumor Mill isn’t necessary to keep Caprice in check. There used to be plenty of ways to deal with Caprice besides psi gaming (Siphon spam, vamp, polop, Drive By, now we have Omar to get by her on HQ and RND, Interdiction to punish greedy corps, and a weird current that makes psi 50/50). I know lots of people didn’t like psi games, but I really did. Still do. I don’t think I would be so annoyed with Rumor Mill if we weren’t waiting a year, year 1/2 for any reasonable defensive upgrades that aren’t hit by the Mill.

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I think Caprice’s PSI game would probably be less frustrating if, instead of ending the run, she made it so you could only access her on that run. Nothing sucks worse than burning a bunch of resources and then whoops it meant nothing do it again maybe this time it’ll work wait nope do it again!

I mean, at least Batty has the courtesy to blow himself up to do his thing.

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Meh… None of the new cards since Pol Op, are that effective against Caprice played by good players. I guess Omar is half of a new ability (we already had Sneakdoor), so that’s nice. But, Interdiction is not much better than Councilman, likely worse since it can be cleared easier by score/current compared to trashing Councilman.

I guess it would be funny if the meta had decks with 2-3x Government Investigations to deal with Caprice/Batty FiHP spam in this hypothetical alternate universe where Rumor Mill wasn’t printed. Because, that’s the only other card that’s effective against those upgrades since Pol Op.

This discussion always focuses on caprice, but please think of the other defensive upgrade that was hit: ash. Ash was a very good upgrade that was reasonably balanced and forced a lot of decisions out of the runner. I get that rumor mill targeted caprice in a lot of ways but let’s not forget that a lot was lost when that card came out besides caprice.

I’m not much of a fan of MWL but rumor mill seems primed for it, as the influence cost just pushes people to employee strike that much harder. I wonder a lot if rumor mill chose a specific card rather than all uniques if it would have been better balanced.

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I agree with all you said. I did say that I wish it was designed to be more targeted. The MWL is a good spot for it.

It’s too bad that Caprice being a NPE for a lot of players (before the new level NPE caused by prison decks last cycle), gave the designers the idea that they need such a strong counter. Hopefully, they also had the forethought to include new interesting ice and upgrades in the next cycles/expansions to make Glacier a viable archetype again.

I do remember that when Clot was released, there was a similar outcry about it being a hard counter that affects not only the big bad wolf (NEH AstroBiotics), but crushes the Tennin FA and CI FA. And now, the author of this excellent article, uses it as an example of a well designed hate card. I do hope with the release of new cards that we come to the same conclusion for Rumor Mill.