Where is the MWL? - As of August 20th, 2018 - MWL 2.2 is here (effective 2018.09.06)

Netrunner General
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If there is a problem at FFG it is likely higher up (corporate strategy).

It’s the little things that reveal this to me. Like how their preview articles always seem to contain sections which totally misunderstand how certain cards will interact. Why do you have people who don’t fully understand the mechanics of the game writing articles trying to sell your game?

Or the constant inconsistencies/errors in the basic text of cards (SYNC BRE, Q-Coherence Chip, Khan using the term “hand”).

Even the MWL feels like something sprung entirely from Damon’s grasp on the game rather than an idea from FFG to curb toxic metas.

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43

CtM is from 7 packs ago. Palana was released 12 packs ago, though I don’t think that’s what you had in mind when you posted this.

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Note that I didn’t say “Whizzard”, but “Whizzard+Parasite/Sifr+Aaron+Temujin+Employee Strike” all rolled into one deck.

Unpacking your post also shows a couple more problems:

  1. If Whizzard is the only thing keeping asset spam in line, asset spam is out of the line
  2. The level of asset spam is unbereable even with Whizzard in the game
  3. Whizzard actually has bad matchups against some asset spam decks, like NEH

True, that was a mistake. Still, I think the problem I’m making still stands: The problematic cards have existed for a very, very long time, far more than FFG would need to address them.

Practically every regular player in Madrid.

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45

Yeah. I still think I’ll give the L5R Core experience a shot, but, after seeing the brilliance of ANR become what it is currently after 4.5 years gives me serious pause. Don’t get me wrong, I generally love the design of the game. However, speaking as a former playtester, it is hard to design, develop, and forecast 12-24 months ahead of time. Thus, the pool needs to be more curated with a tighter rotation, banlist, erratas (minimally, please), and a possible legacy format. Without those, bloat will sink any card game ship.

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46

I think this is a point that bears repeating. If you’re designing, developing etc 12-24 months in advance, there are bound to be mistakes every now and again.

The best thing to do isn’t to pretend those mistakes don’t exist and try and ignore them whilst they completely destroy the game for months.

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47

I 100% agree with @SimonMoon that FFG should start communicating and make something happen.

That said, aside from the terrible situations at tournaments / store champs, do people voice their concerns locally when they stop going to meetups? I think the playerbase can be fostered by the community itself, assuming that everyone knows everyone else at their own meetups. Start playing and organizing draft evenings, evenings where you play onesies, evenings where you get assigned a random ID to build around or just try to make Jemison work together. Apart from any GNK price support or anything.

This does not solve the overall balance problems at the highest competitive level and of course everyone has different play preferences, but I think you can keep people engaged if you come together locally and talk about stuff and try to make the “casual meetup” as fun and engaging as possible for anyone attending.

(not at all am I with this this post intending to act as an apologist to FFG)

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48

I’d like echo @Elusive’s thoughts on taking reasonable approach with the problems we are seeing and avoiding negativity.

While I agree with most of what Kenny posted, I’m not so sure about a few things:

I’m guessing this is a call back Damon’s choice of words on social media? I’m not a fan of the current meta, but I also think Mumbad was worse. I think something should still be done.

What’s the basis for this statement? Just local meta observations? The best global source of data (Jinteki.net) we have shows a slight edge to the Runner in competitive lobby, and a decent edge to the Corp in casual. My local meta experience is similar to the Jinteki meta. This is not to disagree with Kenny’s other observations that the match-ups are very difficult for most decks.

I think those are the biggest problems to the meta: high variance match-ups where you’re almost forced to play certain decks if you want to do well and a lot of those decks are NPE. The other issue is lower attendance at competitive events, likely as a result from the current meta (or not recovered from the sharp decline from the Mumbad cycle).

On thing to keep in mind, Damon stated on @Run that the competitive playerbase for Netrunner is in the single digits. So that does affect how a company responses and prioritizes. Yeah, yeah, I know a company wants to keep these players happy because they are natural ambassadors to the game, but if you’re dealing with limited resources you have to take into account those kinds of numbers.

On the communication front, yes, FFG OP has not been very responsive about dates. But, from the designer’s communications, I have been impressed. Boggs has only been announced a bit over a month ago, and already he has been on (EDIT: now 3) podcasts (ACAC, BP, and TWA). He has talked about the MWL on BP, but it doesn’t sound like they’re ready to release one. He did say he reads forums, which I think is the first time I’ve heard any of the designers admit to. Given that there’s a new designer/developer in place, I’m not sure how quickly they can release a MWL. And, is there any statement from FFG OP that will please the community if they are not sure when the MWL would be released because of the transition? I mean, I guess it’s nice to say “we’ve heard your concerns over the timing of MWL and we’re working on it”, but my guess that it will only go so far, and there will more grumbling if it takes 1-2 more months.

Releasing Regional dates is another matter. I’m not sure why there hasn’t been any announcement about that, unless somehow it’s linked to the MWL. But, I rather them focus on getting it right, than having a similar experience as last year, where they compressed it because of the split to two track OP timelines.

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49

I don’t think CtM is overpowered on its own. Sensie certainly is, even the other political assets don’t looks as good as Sensie. In the context of the full Flashpoint cycle, and certainly if Sensie is removed, I believe CtM is of a reasonable power level.

CtM was extremely powerful in the meta it emerged into (Dumble-dominated, lots of runners with weak credit pools). Even as the meta adjusted, there just weren’t good answers to CtM in Blood Money. But by Escalation I think the tide was already turning against CtM, and with Aaron Marron CtM is certainly much weaker than it once was.

I don’t think CtM is a problem by itself. If CtM is somehow restricted from running Sensie then I think the ID is fine.

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50

Let’s follow the money, since that’s always what it comes down to. What do you all know about Asmodee?

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51

This is the reason that OP isn’t emphasized or given enough resources then, correct? If they don’t really care about the competitive scene, why the MWL delay? Shouldn’t OP and the lead designer be given more of a free reign on this? From all I have heard, that is not the case. #executivedabbling

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52

Whether FFG should focus on the casual or competitive players is a false dichotomy IMO. It is often the competitive players that are organizing the store meetups that keep casual players buying packs (if you’re playing at home with your roommate, there’s no way you need 8 cycles of cards). It is the competitive players who continue playing through the dark days when the meta sucks, because they have so much invested in the game. I think if you lose the competitive players, you also lose a lot of the more casual ones.

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53

Someone on Reddit posted the GoogleTrends data for search term “netrunner” which, on its own, shows a downward curve. I scrubbed through the timeline at random and settled on 2015-10-28 (release date of Data and Destiny) until 2016-10-28. As you can see it spikes with the release, then stays relatively flat until it starts to fall in winter/spring.

IMG_0091.PNG1536×2048 240 KB

I also found this article on BGG, timestamped December, 2015 detailing some pretty profound structural changes to Asmodee/FFG. Promotions, licensing agreements, distribution, Ticket to Ride… It’s all here. Starting in 2016, Asmodee Will Operate as Asmodee North America, Cut Off Distributors, and Limit Online Sales | BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek

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54
  1. Yes.
  2. I wouldn’t say they don’t care, but are overburdened supporting all the games they do (see answer 1), that a Netrunner MWL coming out every 6 (or 8 or 10 months) might not be the highest priority. I think they want to do a good job, just don’t have the time to do it. I had experiences in the corporate world (and I’m sure others can concur), where we want to be responsive to our customers, but cannot be because of lack of resources. I think that’s bad business, but if revenue and profit are steady or growing, does it move the needle?
  3. I think in this case they want to give the new lead designer time to get up to speed. And not handcuff him with what a prior lead’s view of the meta should be.

(It’s quite possible that I may have miss your point. I peek in SlimSlack regularly, but I don’t keep up to minute on the thoughts and memes.)

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55

I completely get it. I understand they have neither the resources nor care to address the game the way people who attend ANR forums do. It’s just sad, really. One person’s hobby is another’s small revenue stream.

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56

I agree with the overall point, but the part about “competitive players continuing playing through the dark days” seems false. Competitive players are way more sensitive to a sucky meta, whereas kitchen-table players probably aren’t all that perturbed by a card like Sifr (or a trend like asset spam), partly because there are “noncompetitive” solutions such as Shattered Remains, Lab Dog, or a stern smack upside the head, and partly because casual games are less likely to see abusive parasite combos in the first place.

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57

Netrunner players announce pre-emptive boycott of L5R unless communication starts

:wink:

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58

I feel like this can’t be stated enough. I don’t think this holds universally among competitive games so much as Netrunner’s entire community (casual + competitive) is smallish.

And this might be a pointless, entirely unverifiable thing to ask but are there really that many “kitchen-table” players in Netrunner? I might be talking wholly from personal anecdote here but the barrier’s of entry are just too steep for a lot of my friends and getting into the game, especially now, feels like a monumental task in terms of time and cost.

My point here is that while I like the idea of separating “competitive” and “casual” Netrunner players, ultimately I think the community is too small to consider with this sort of division; we have to refer to the community as a whole and regardless of how you look at it our numbers are dwindling. FFG doesn’t have the luxury to pander to one group or the other when the numbers of their player base is ultimately limited.

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59

From listening to the recent interviews from Boggs and Damon, here are a few things that were mentioned in regards to the meta:

  • They are usually a year out in developing the game. Damon also said in earlier interviews that he doesn’t have a great idea on the current meta. People send him reports.
  • They have good playtesters, but they’re all over the place. They don’t always predict the meta. (ex/ didn’t see a Whizzard/CTM meta, but Jess was looking strong).
  • They test both full cycles and up to a certain datapack, but it sounds like more of the testing is done with the full cycle and cards move in and out of certain datapacks. But they can’t tell if there will be a disturbance in supply chain so they don’t necessary know which datapacks will be out in the wild at certain events. It means that the month-to-month meta may be uncertain.

While @spags may be out of good ideas :wink:, I think I may have one. I was thinking of this for a some time while keeping tabs on @Elusive’s ban list efforts (and it looks like @ppang was thinking something similar as well from an earlier post):

While Boggs and playtesters, and FFG OP may be too busy and unaware of the current meta, why not leverage the passion/time of the competitive players and form a Players’ Council. We could fold it under ANRPC or Stimhack (or wherever), nominate a small group (3 to 20-ish) of competitive players (I’d nominate Elusive and @SimonMoon, from their current meta analysis efforts). The Players’ Council will put together a list unbalanced/NPE cards, decklists, and data, after the competitive community had a chance to play in each shift in the meta (datapacks, expansions, MWL, etc.). The rest of us co-sign it if we agree to the Players’ Council recommendations. Boggs can take it to his playtesters and maybe do monthly test sessions in the current meta with some decks/cards to focus on. Then, they can decide how they deal with any problems they find (i.e. they may know that a new card will be released and some of our current problems will be solved in that manner).

There must have been something similar to this proposal done in other games, right?

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60

There’s not really any barrier to entry for kitchen table net runner. They just buy a core set, and maybe a box or two. As long as they stay in their personal (probably 2-4 person) meta the size of the card pool doesn’t matter.

Edit: These guys pop up and ask questions on Reddit here and there, i.e. “How do I beat my gfs eater cutlery deck, I have 1 core, C&C, O&C” so they do exist.

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61

If everyone is quitting netrunner maybe this is the year I should be going to Nationals.

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