So I know that for a lot of people this is beating a dead horse, but I think its important to spell a lot of this out in clear explicit terms in a place that FFG can see.
SC’s are over, and the meta is objectively terrible. Runner Corp balance is the worst I’ve ever seen it, Ice is terrible, every deck has terrible almost unbeatable matchups. This is bad, but more importantly it’s been translating into lower attendance of meetups. Trying to get a weekly meetup going and plenty of the people have basically said I’m not going to play Netrunner until something changes, and that means less people at the meetups which makes it worse for everyone who still comes. I don’t know how much longer my in person community can go on like this before meetups just stop all together, and when something changes there will probably be people who have been permanently lost. This mirrors what most people elsewhere have been saying that there in person meetups are dwindling, and once you get down to 2-3 people it becomes incredibly hard to recover.
I’m taking part in the King of Servers tournament, and when I was trying to get people to come I talked to 5-6ish people who basically said they aren’t coming because they hate the meta too much (the general gist of the complaints was that Ice is too bad and they felt their options on both sides are too limited). So @internet and I talked about it and agreed to do something I didn’t really like, implement an alternative banlist (which convinced some of these people to come, but not others because it wasn’t official). I’d like to get around to organizing another SSCI with Dan during the offseason between now and regionals, but we can’t use a non official banlist for that so I have no interest in doing so.
The point of all of this is, lack of updates and communication are having real negative impact on the community of people who play this game (and not just competitive players, but everyone). I don’t know if FFG doesn’t know or doesn’t care about this impact, but either way its incredibly discouraging as a player. A MWL announcement sooner rather than later would have a huge positive impact on our ability to keep meetups from dying, and at minimum clear communication about when to expect an update would go a long way (I heard rumors of not until after Regionals, which is frankly terrifying). I was planning on going to Euros but I don’t know if its worth it if this is the state the game is going to be in.
As far as I know, the only thing we can do is make sure FFG is aware of the issues. As far as I can tell, FFGOP is in charge of MWL / FAQ updates, so I think everyone who is struggling with local turnout should email them to let them know the problems we’re facing. This is basically all I can think of doing, is making sure the people who can change things know what a terrible impact the current meta is having on player turnout.
Didn’t Boggs say the new MWL was on its way but that it would take a while to work through the channels at FFG? I thought I heard something to that effect in the Run Last Click interview.
At least as bad, I’d argue, partially because this will be the second Regionals season in which your choice of decks/playstyles are constricted by the existence/prevalence of a handful of power cards.
Either way, last year’s Regionals saw a 30%+ drop in attendance compared to 2015, due at least in part to how unpleasant the metagame was at the time. I don’t think that the game, as it exists currently, can handle another blow like that.
Emphatically second the message in the opening post. Game badly needs an aggressive MWL, and it feels like we’ve been just waiting in a limbo for a while now. Good chance for Boggs to make a strong entrance.
This is where I’m at. I haven’t played a game since I went to a store champ ~1 month ago.
Corp deckbuilding options feel ridiculously constrained by the stupid-overpowered runner cards (e.g. Aaron and Sifr). When you get a fair matchup (e.g. Andy vs ETF) the game is still fun but most of the time it feels like the game is decided by the matchup (e.g. asset spam crushes things that are unprepared for it but gets crushed by things that are).
Here’s hoping for a ban list, or at least SOMETHING. I’m thinking I will skip regionals if nothing changes.
arguable worse, the mumbad spammers were a very small portion of the field. I think of the regionals I went to there were around 8-12% of the field. Now I think there is an argument to be made that they were more oppressive when you did face them and forced the choice of whizzard. The current meta almost the entire runner meta is oppressive in some way and your choices as corp are very limited. It feels worse to me due to the amount of decks containing temujin, sifr, etc. Then you have runner decks like dyper. Overall it feels worse to me, but I’m a mumbad spammer so I’m biased I guess.
FFG’s business model for LCGs is like this: produce a new game, hype that shit, show some borderline effort the first two years then let it slowly die. They’ve never shown the intention to build a card game that lasts. For a card game to be succesful, you need to push Organized Play, you need to invest in Brick & Mortar stores, you need a judge program and you need to closely monitor the meta. As it is right now, I doubt that there will be a huge growth in the player base without changing some core concepts in how they manage their products.
I basically just stopped playing when I read the text of Sifr. Especially knowing that this was pushed against Damon’s will.
I’m pretty much waiting for rotation. There have been so many misplays on FFG’s part - waiting too long to handle Astro, then coupling with asset spam, prison decks, games decided on a Sensie/Sensie/Banker’s opening, and finally Aaron and Sifr. Rotation will be a big change, and at this point I just can’t tell if it will help or just make things worse. I’ve little confidence from what I’ve seen, but I’m keeping an eye on things and hoping to be surprised.
I don’t have much to add to what SimonMoon said. Just want to chime in that I agree. Unfortunately all my local friends quit during the Mumbad cycle and never came back. I took a few months off after regionals last year but came back after the last MWL update.
I found the game pretty healthy for a while (my top complaint was citadel sanctuary really, really should have been printed in the same pack as CTM), but things really went off the rails after Quorum dropped.
I don’t understand why FFG isn’t more aggressive about dealing with obvious problems with the game and will never understand how sifr got printed at all. I really enjoy Netrunner at its best and want to see the game do well. What I’ve seen lately is not conducive to that, to say the least.
Agree with a lot of the sentiments here. Imo, MWL is a colossal failure for “fixing the meta” which was predicted by many of the top players when the first MWL was announced. The influence system in Netrunner is one of the coolest mechanics in the game and mucking it up like crazy is not cool. I can accept that sometimes cards are printed with too few influence and probably need an errata of +1 influence coughtemujinlolcough, but making extremely powerful cards remove influence from their own faction is a terrible solution. We NEED a ban list. Putting half of the Anarch card pool on MWL won’t fix anything. Anarchs will just have 0 influence and still be oppressive.
I agree with everything here. Really FFG has just overcompensated for everything. Basically, X is being printed, print Y to counter it BUT add an advantage so it’s “fair”. Then print Z to counter THAT but make it have a DISadvantage. Then print A to obsolete Z and B and C to work perfectly with A to make an unstoppable Combo. It’s just a mess. I hope Boggs can help, but honestly I don’t think I’ll be buying cards for a looong time. Hopefully TD adds some interesting cards, but, honestly, i’m scared for the game.
my problem isn’t with the MWL (which needs to be updated) but with the failure to update the errata for BRE, which by all accounts is a misprint that breaks the game in horrible degenerate ways. Clearly there is something systemic about these mistakes, delays, and design choices at play here. i just hope that they are taking the time to really evaluate what is causing these issue’s, because even if they fix them, i am not confident that they will continue to happen.
What effect did the reboot have on the player base? Did it shrink considerably? Or did it stay the same or even grow? Genuinely curious, because I’ve never played Thrones at all.
Which one? The ccg version that had terrible balancing, the 1.0 version which was a cluster fuck rules-wise or the 2.0 which no one cares about anymore? I mean I like this game but that doesn’t help if no one wants to play it, besides that I wouldn’t call a game successful if it attracts about 100 players (generous number) to one tourney a year.
Nobody is accusing FFG of malice, only incompetence.
Programs like the MWL, rotation, and (potentially) core 2.0 are supposed to prevent the need for a full scale reboot the way AGOT had (twice). Yet the MWL has been delayed for months with no explanation, rotation is woefully inadequate, and Core 2.0 still hasn’t been officially announced. The way things are going, Netrunner may require a full reboot, which would make their entire, years in the making, rotation plan pointless.
And for the record: yes, the latest AGOT reboot did increase the audience a lot. I would be fine with Netrunner rebooting as a Netrunner Second Edition if not for the fact that rotation was supposed to prevent that from being necessary.