NISEI Game Night Kits

I started playing in December, and consider earning a mat an important rite of passage (that I haven’t yet accomplished). It doesn’t have to be from coming first at an event, but I do hope it’s in recognition of some meaningful achievement. Acknowledging the logistical issues above, I was excited to see that NISEI is keeping the dream alive for me.

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Your meaningful achievement is being part of a community of people with whom you negotiate a mutual sense of reality. Winning a weird rubbery poster is a bit secondary, don’t you think?

(Do you do stand-up by the way?)

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Since NISEI is a nonprofit and nonprofits operate on donations, is there or will there be a mechanism to donate to support the cause? Or are prize kits, etc. the only mechanism to help defray what I can only assume has been substantial costs to get this all rolling?

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The mat is an artifact from that reality. It travels from event to event as a portable shorthand for my commitment/involvement, which drives the need for me to feel like it’s earned via some legitimate feat of prowess. I don’t assume this is anyone else’s experience, but that’s my best sense of what goes on in my head.

I have never done standup, but I am asked that question often enough that it makes me wonder what I’m projecting.

Y’all, if we continue kit discussions we should consider a new thread. However, let me be absolutely clear:

If you buy a kit, distribution is up to you. You don’t have to do mat, Titan, and Sheeds to the top performer.

If you run evens, we have no requirements on these GNKs. Do league. Do draft. Do Standard. Do YOU and the group you run with.

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Indeed it would be good if someone who can do this moved kit-related posts to a new thread.

Of course. But no matter what I do, I cannot cut the mat or a Titan into two parts. I have only 4 players that will get something more than the participation prize. Which means that after a bad start (bad according to whatever metric is used to decide the prizes) the incentive to try to do well in later rounds is gone. Midpack and bottom of the results table is exactly the same.

For me, a good set of prizes would be one that allows me to recognize all levels of performance. A participation prize so that noone leave empty-handed. A prize that goes to most of players but not for all. A prize that goes to about top 30%. Finally a special prize to recognize the winner. In this kit, we lack the “most but not all” prize (which I feel is the most important one, as this is what new players will aim to achieve, so it gives them incentive to still try to do their best) and the top 30% prize is a bit in short supply, making it rather a “definitely above average” than “slightly above average”.

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Depending on the size of your group, I would personally recommend a prize pool with placement determing order of picks instead of the additive method of participation/high rank/winner. Having run lots of small attendance events myself.

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I’m not sure if this would merit a separate thread, but something I’ve been thinking about is how, in X-Wing 2.0, they’re no longer printing point costs for ships or upgrades directly on the cards so they could tweak them in the future if balance dictates. I wonder if something like that could work for NR? Maybe not on all cards, but maybe having future ID’s influence printed in the MWL? Would give a extra tuning knob to play with.

No matter who gets the mat (the winner or someone else), it’s still only one person, while everybody else gets significantly less.

Also, note that I’m not saying NISEI should not offer mats – far from it – I’m just saying an alternative prize kit with a more equitable prize structure would be much better for casual play.

We already do this – only one prize in pick order, then if stuff is left over, go again.
Still, only one person gets a huge prize (the mat), the others get small ones (1-2 cards). That’s what I’m talking about.

Edited for clarity.

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I understand that NISEI does not have the capability that FFG had for other prizes, such as acrilic tokens. Those are also very attractive and might help with mid-range standings prizes.

Sorry for hijacking this thread with the kit discussion!
I am a little surprised, though, that my point about
casual play vs. heavily tiered prizes
seems to not be coming across. Is this because I (as someone not at all interested in competitive play, after trying it) see things that differently from most players, or am I not expressing myself well?

New suggestion: Would NISEI consider creating the position of Casual Play Representative as part of their OP team?

Netrunner OP has always been focused on competitive play, and naturally the perspectives of at least somewhat competitive players dominate online discussions (these players are just that much more likely to be super involved with the community and post online regularly while most casual players do not even enter these online spaces).
In the interest of keeping the community alive longer beyond high-level competition, putting a little more focus on players who are not interested in this, but nonetheless want community involvement and lovely Netrunner goodies, could be good.

The players I mostly play this game with do not hanker after that one moment of glory where they finally win their first mat (as described as an essential part of the Netrunner experience by @LSTM above). They just want to play the game with funny decks, where it matters less whether they win and more if the wacky card combination goes of, or if they have a nice social evening, and where they then get something nice to take home afterwards.
The pressure to compete for wins actively diminishes the enjoyment of these people.
That doesn’t mean they are any less invested in the game, though.

(Yes, I would put myself forward for such a position, if applications were opened, and I have a bunch of suggestions to make. Of course, there may be better-qualified applicants, but I say this so that it doesn’t look like I’m asking for things but not willing to put any work in myself.)

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Make an achievement-based prize structure, then. Install more than four things in a turn? Get a prize-point. Play Exile? Get five prize points. Install a Monolith? Get ten prize points. Whatever. At the end, most prize points gets first dibs on a prize, and go on down the line.

Maybe they don’t want to compete for wins. In that case, distribute all prizes equally and just have a nominal entry fee to cover the cost. If the prizes can’t be distributed equally, save them until they can be distributed equally, or use only those to run a tournament for the real players competitive players.

(I feel it necessary to specify that the strikethrough was 100% a joke and shouldn’t be taken seriously at all…)

The main thrust is that the kit has a ‘suggested’ distribution model that presumes a competitive tournament, simply because that’s going to be the most common distribution. If you charge an entry fee, we assume you’re not catering to the casual crowd. You don’t have to follow that suggestion, though, and can make your own.

A Casual Play Representative is an interesting idea though.

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You can’t distribute prizes equally when there is only one playmat and the rest of the prize pool are cards…
That is the point of this whole discussion. I was asking whether in the future there might be prize kits that allow a more equitable distributions of prizes.
Edit: Yes, OK, we could wait until we have 5-7 playmats to distribute, I guess. But we’re talking more than a year at that point.

Edit again: I don’t want to take anybody’s lovely playmats… I just wanted to say that for genuinely casual play, a prize kit with one huge prize and otherwise only small ones is not suitable, and that if there was an option to omit the playmat, the kit would also be less pricy to obtain, so the barrier to entry would simultaneously be lowered.
For casual players, both of these things go really well together.
That’s all.

(Sorry to keep reiterating, I just feel like nearly every answer misses the point I wanted to make.)

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Cheers, thanks for the discussion and suggestions. I can’t speak for others in the thread, but personally I was just trying to offer alternatives and also learn as much as I can about your situation for future considerations of kits.

I don’t know that we will add another position to the team, but I will certainly bring it up with the rest of the board.

Thanks again!

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Thanks a lot for taking my comments into consideration! :slight_smile:

The implied prize differential is certainly something we’ll take onboard. The singleton playmat is constrained by trying to fit in minimal shipping weight as it’s obviously the biggest offender - even an extra mat would likely put us into parcel shipping weight rather than large letter and could drastically increase the price of the kit. Since we no longer have a model that involves wholesale distribution to stores, direct shipping weight is a concern. On the other hand, the playmat gives us something exciting and splashy for our new prize support and we wouldn’t want to omit it, and doing multiple kit options just makes the whole process more convoluted. The Titan/Rashida distribution assumes people will want a playset of Rashidas and only 1 Titan, but the premium/participation ratio is definitely something we’ll consider in the future - it’s tricky to hit a point that offers something for every conceivable use case, and I think modelling it on previous GNK kits is a safe step while we work these things out. For larger metas or a more equal distribution, I’d recommend you order multiple kits or augment it with other prize support!

Regarding casual play representation, I think you might be underestimating how casually-minded the current OP team is. Alternate ways to use Game Night Kit prizing are a big part of discussions and the GNK documentation that will be in the kits themselves. If you’d like my credentials, I did extremely poorly at Worlds.

I think the biggest way in which the new GNK kit is a step ahead for casual meetups is this: Everyone that wants to order one, gets one. You’re not constrained by store ordering or events - run a league at your kitchen table, run a draft at a brewery, give them out to whoever designs the best Chela deck. I think getting kits into the hands of people that might not have local store support is huge, and I’m excited to see what people do with them.

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Lots of good discussion happening here but I agree that this topic probably warrants its own thread. I will say that I am very intent on focusing equally on support for casual players and I think @Chaostheorie’s suggestion of an optional, cheaper kit without a mat is a very good idea. It is unfortunately a bit too late to implement this for the Q1 kit (we can count time remaining until launch in hours), but I will absolutely work on this for the Q2 Game Night Kit.

We are absolutely not going to stop offering kits with playmats for those that would like them. I have already tweaked the balance of cards within the Q1 kit slightly and will consider doing so for future kits.

It is also worth noting that there is no specified structure for prize payout, unlike, say, a regional. A tournament organizer may use the prizes however they see fit and a single kit does not have to be used in a single evening.

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Then the amount of Rashidas included should be divisible by 3 :smiley:

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I like that a playmate is included and many people going crazy about it! I don’t need 20 mats, but i appreciate it!

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