Well, France can do what they want. Why not just have everyone play on OCTGN there? Password protect the rooms. However, they still have to show up to the tourney, with their own laptop/PC.
Iāll be the guy that plays Horizontal and insists my remotes have breathing room and must not stack. Blinders tech.
Thereās no way you can keep a bunch of runners from swapping stolen information. Anyone who would try is clearly a planted corp sysop anyway, and should be frame jobbed immediately.
Plus, like half the fun of Netrunner is telling the full story during the smoke break afterward. Anyone who would try to kill that fun is just a broken, soulless husk of a former human being.
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I know Calimsha is frustrated by French enforcement of the scouting rule. But that doesnt make us the weirdos who should just play on octgn.
Some people use the fact nobody says anything about this rule to be sure they know every single decklist in the top once they pass the cut (or even during swiss).
Tournament players need to respect their opponents and many people believe scouting is unsportsmanship. I do not talk about seeing one hand or hearing about a snare, I talk about watching tables and talking to people only to gather information.
To avoid this issues during french nationals, it was asked to people to go outside when they finished their games (which is not uncommon in card games I believe). I donāt think anyone but Calimsha complained about that, and the tourney stayed fun and friendly.
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I canāt say Iāve ever heard of anyone being asked to stand outside after finishing their match, in any card game. Ever.
The biggest issue Iāve heard with this is when the organised scouting by professional teams at high level Magic was exposed.
The fact is that you cannot stop scouting without taking draconian measures and making the tournament experience way less fun than it should be.
If your deck relies so heavily on being secret, then thatās an issue with your deck, and something that you likely should take into account when building.
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Yep. Relying on hidden information in netrunner is weird.
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I think strictly enforcing the āno scoutingā rule disproportionately punishes any out-of-town guys 'n gals, since the locals have a better read on each other and will probably gossip a little bit between rounds (and perhaps outright collude).
Your obvious, condescending sarcasm and gross over-simplifcation aside, what youāre saying is correct.
Relying on hidden information is a bad idea. Having the option to make use of hidden information is completely different.
Relying on hidden information means that your deck is non-functional or severely impaired to the point of turning most matchups unfavourable should information about your deck be made available. Having the option means that you can still utilise hidden information without your deck being crippled if any of it should come to light.
The mechanics of netrunner are such that hidden information works for the corporation regardless of whether the Runner knows the consistency of the deck or not. Just because they saw a marked accounts, doesnāt mean thatās what was put down. Similarly, just because theyāve seen an over-writer or reversed accounts, doesnāt mean thatās what was IAA-ed.
At tournament levels of play, youāre going to have people playing around all but the most niche cards at the top tables anyway. I doubt if you were to ask bblums, spags, mediohxcore, kiv, calimsha etc. whether they would never ever consider a card, the answer would be yes.
Hidden information in Netrunner (at least at the tournament level) is something of a misnomer. Itās a tool for players to use to help bluff, mislead and slow down their opponent. And it can be done whether your opponent knows what your deck consists of or not.
Beyond that we have to look at the social and entertainment aspects of the game. Tournament or no, we play this to have fun. Draconian anti-scouting measures will only serve to reduce player interactivity and will actually punish players more because people are still going to talk about their matches, whether to intentionally share information or simply because that is what people do after playing games.
What are you going to do? Force people to stand outside, then set a staff member (not the TO obviously, since they need to run the tournament) to watch over them and monitor their conversations? Monitor their text messages? Have them sit in complete silence away from the tournament with no access to electronic devices? All of this because somebody wants to have maybe 1% more equity when they put a cerebral overwriter in their deck? That sounds like a completely awful situation to play in. And unfortunately, the situations described above are not hyperbole if you want to stop scouting. Asking players not to share information simply puts certain people at a disadvantage.
At the end of the day, your deck shouldnāt rely on hidden information to win. If it does, itās likely not a good deck anyway, because it lacks consistency, versatility and resilience. Beyond that, we simply cannot expect information to remain secret in a well connected, social, leisurely setting. If you want a flavour reason, hacktivists likely share information about corporation defences, and corporations hire from similar pools of corporate troubleshooters and you bet your arse Jinteki will pay through the nose to know what weaknesses Haas-Bioroid has.
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Yeah, I think this is more important than people realize. I think the default state of the game for a lot of players is to pretty much know what your opponent is bringing, more or less. I consider the āsurpriseā factor of a new or off-key deck a bonus, not a requirement for fair play against that deck.
Stringent anti-fun (oops, anti-scouting) enforcement mostly hurts casual players, new players, non-local players, and busy professional/parent/other obligations players; the types of players who arenāt up to date on the meta (local or otherwise) or donāt have the card familiarity to be able to quickly guess a decks strategy. These are exactly the types of people we want to make events accessible to and the types least likely to make the cut and have their heinous scouting practices influence any actual placement.
3 Likes