just some semi-related ramblings, but i think the problem lies in the initial design.
compare Wyldside to something like Hard at Work, which costs 2 more and gives credits in lieu of cards.
compare Hard at Work to Magnum Opus, and it kind of makes sense. it’s a once-per-turn, mandatory Magnum Opus that doesn’t use up MU. i can see the math on that.
ignoring similar things like Tri-Maf Contact, we can then go back to comparing Hard at Work to Wyldside. the ability to click for 2c is apparently valued higher than the ability to click for 2 cards, given that Wyldside only costs 3
i can see the logic. you don’t want to draw too much. you don’t want to have to discard. etc. etc. etc.
but 3c for the ability to draw 2 cards at the expense of a click for the rest of the game on its own is already a great deal. now you can pay 6c, another click, another card, and get 2 clickless draws for the rest of the game. i would argue that drawing is one of the most powerful actions you can do as a runner, even comparing basic actions to more complex ones, like playing powerful cards. imagine if Wyldside was 5c to install. would it be perceived as useless, balanced, etc? it’s effectively 6c now, but you don’t have to spend your click anymore. that is insane value.
it reminds me of the one-for-three cards from magic, like Lightning Bolt, where you spend 1 mana of a particular colour and get 3 of something, depending on your colour. it was determined very early on that some are way more valuable than others, and 3 life for a white mana wasn’t nearly as useful as 3 cards for a blue.
back to Netrunner, now then let’s compare Faust to Eater, probably the closest card in the design space. when Eater came out, Anarchs got a huge boost. they were Eater / Keyholing everything. can’t get into the remote? no problem: Singularity. Eater / Siphon was a big problem as well. spend all of your money defending HQ, lose all the rest of your money to Siphon, then it doesn’t matter that Eater is your only breaker. who needs Blackmail?
it was strong, but it had a definite downside, in that as soon as any ICE was rezzed, the runner needed some kind of backup breaker, or the use of Parasite / cutlery to get rid of it. being able to use replacement effects was very strong, and Eater is a pretty efficient breaker.
then, we have Faust. since its introduction, i haven’t seen a single Eater, and it’s no real surprise to me. it costs less influence, less credits to install, and if we value 1 card = 1 credit (or as we learned above, 1 card = <1c), it pumps twice as efficiently, breaks for the same, but it has no drawback whatsoever printed on the card (it has an inherent ‘drawback’ of losing cards in your hand and effective HP, also credit pools have no real cap, but handsize is effectively capped at 5 + anything else used to increase that or draw before you run). but it needs no real support other than card draw, which is already something nearly every deck wants anyway. i think that they valued Faust a little too low, considered things like max hand size, ICE like Komainu, ambushes like Snare! and Project Junebug, and kill decks in general, but many kill decks are somewhat difficult to work effectively.
imagine if Faust were printed with the same cost and influence as Eater and boosted 1 strength per discard instead of 2. would it be balanced then? would it need some other drawback as well?
i think it’s clear though that Faust as a singular card is a little imbalanced in that it completely nullified a pre-existing card and fits well into nearly any type of deck, whereas that pre-existing card, Eater, needed very specific kinds of support. Wyldside seems undercosted when compared to the mechanically similar Hard at Work.
i don’t think Adjusted Chronotype is necessarily an issue on its own. if you consider that, at base value, it’s good for getting clicks back from things like Enigma. it works with relatively underpowered cards like Hard at Work and Starlight Crusade Funding
D4v1d i think is problematic in that it breaks ICE from 5 and higher, and i think that range is actually too low. i think it should have been 6, 7, or 8 from the beginning. i get what it was trying to do. the fixed breakers for Anarch are mostly at 3 strength, so D4v1d doesn’t completely fill that gap, so there still needs to be some help, like Atman at 4, Datasucker / Parasite, The Personal Touch, etc.
i also get the 4 + 1 = 5, which is cute, but 5+ things covers so much ICE. too much imo.
i don’t know if banning is the right idea. i don’t know if it’s the wrong idea, either. and, granted, all of this analysis is with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, plus several cycles of cards that have been released since, so i don’t know if i can really say there was any fault in the design process itself. i do like the idea and implementation of the MWL. i think that some of these problematic cards being on the list is probably going to help, and i imagine if things are as common as they are perceived, we’ll see Museum and Faust and probably Wyldside on the MWL at some point. considering that D4v1d is 4 influence for everyone but Anarch and Clone Chip is already on the MWL, i don’t see it being there.
but all of that said, i would still point out that when the MWL was first revealed, a lot of people said ‘it’s just going to be some other top tier deck that’s common’