[spoiler]The above MWL changes are bad. Except Desperado and PPVP coming off. Fine and Temu (sucks about crim though).
Ethics has no place on the list. -3 per for those cards is far too much.[/spoiler]
I disagree about ethics. That card is annoying as hell and continues to be part of a large number of NPE corp decks.
Edit: it’s not OP necessarily, but if you want to fix NPE, you need to nerf prison.
11 Likes
I think Bio Ethics alone doesn’t promote NPE. Bio Ethics plus Hostile Infrastructure plus Friends in High Places definitely promotes a NPE.
The political assets in general are mistakes. Needed higher rez costs, at least.
13 Likes
They should have kept the design of the core cards for the political assets.
-Bankers and suffrage movement are fine.
-Bio-ethics should read “If the runner made a run during his last turn bio-ethics gains ‘when your turn begins do 1 net damage’ if there is no ICE protecting this server”. Fine card for decks like PE , but prison can’t rely on it too much because you can just stop running.
-Sensie should cost 1 (because why is it 0) and only let’s you draw 3 cards (no shuffling back). Still a good card, but far less opportunities for asset spam decks to keep their hand clean and it would be more dangerous to fire.
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I think they’re fine in any normal deck as powerful run-promoting cards. However their synergy with any trash cost increase is obviously unbalanced.
Or recursion. Or CTM.
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Ethics, Hostiles and recursion. It was NPE way before Friends. Didn’t really even need Hostiles necessarily in the early prison IGs if you could protect archives enough. Hostile itself is not NPE and Friends isn’t necessarily either, it’s just with annoying assets that those become part of the problem.
I agree completely. Recursion, IG and CTM synergy, Hostile Infrastructure… they all adjust the cost of removing what should be powerful punishments for not checking remotes and turn them into uber-power cards. The idea was obviously to make them super powerful but mitigated by the fact that you can’t protect them with ice and thus they are vulnerable and don’t last long. Turns out there’s other ways to make them not vulnerable and last for nigh on forever, and that sucks for the runner and pushes them over the top.
If the Political Assets had something like “If the runner accesses ~ while it is installed they may pay 2 credits to remove it from the game” would they even be close to as warping as they’ve been?
I agree with you all.
More interesting sidetrack:
Other peoples NPE is my monostrategic, but i don’t think the terms overlap. I think any strategy classified as monostrategic and powerful without counterplays will be NPE, but a balanced IG with counterplay would not be NPE in its nature (but would still be monostrategic).
I will argue that we should not use the term NPE in discussions about game-balance. Partly because it is more subjective, and partly because NPE is not tied to any specific strategy as it changes with the power-level of a strategy.
A player can experience NPE, but it is a different phenomenon. That can be related to many other things than game-balance, like player-skill or deck imbalance or just a bad day. It seems like an easy trap to fall into calling specific decks/strategies NPE while an NPE is impossible to separate from the player him/herself.
10 Likes
I think this is a salient point. As an example I, for one, really enjoyed taking apart Museum IG Bio-Ethics builds with Whizz. It is a fun puzzle to me, and a tense dance between what it must-trash and what I can leave.
Normal person: "I want to have fun and I respect my opponent’s time, skill level, and desire to play a wide-open game"
Prison deck fan: “I ask that you respect the fact that my choice to play something you consider to be unfun represents my enjoyment of the game.”
15 Likes
Anecdotally, my meta playercount has dropped because people moved or are otherwise busy, no one has cited meta problems. (Weekly meetup dropped from ~10 to ~6)
Local SC had 12 players, I couldn’t make the other two because of prior commitments. Entire field was HB and Jinteki, no NBN or Weyland. It was a very weird tournament. (Only one CI deck.)
So, I don’t really see these problems… My view is limited, but I would posit that this is a relatively healthy meta where almost any Runner and almost any Corp can have success. Currently the way to success for most Runners is by Remote-Lock (my Sunny deck is certainly having success in this meta…) Corp success is more ephemeral in my meta, it seems that the best strategies involve net damage or fast advance.
Again, my meta is weird and thus my view on this is limited. No one plays CtM (except me, because I can…) which I’m pretty sure is warping things pretty severely.
However, I do want to address something that I saw, that worries me… Netrunner at its heart is not anti-snowball. It’s a game of competing snowballs. The Corp’s board grows turn after turn, even if in the past it was through ICE mostly and not Assets, the only difference now is that when the Corp gets its snowball big enough (enough Assets) there’s a palpable in-game effect that causes them to win shortly after. Similarly, the Runner’s board grows turn after turn, getting more Icebreakers, and other installed cards. The difference now is that there’s appreciable effects to counteract a Corp ICE-Snowball in the form of Sifr. Notice that Criminal still has no native way to deal with the Corp ICE-Snowball, and Anarchs are the best at dealing with it. Meet the new meta, same as the old meta.
And another thing, ‘trying to make things better’ is only valid as long as there is a ‘better’. What’s better than the current meta? The last one with CtM/Whizz domination? The one before that with WyldCakes domination? The one before that with PPVP Kate domination? How about AndySucker?
I don’t feel that there has been a well-articulated End Goal for this ‘better’ that we’re aiming for. I could’ve missed it, though… Anyone got a good one handy?
3 Likes
TWA dropped the second Boggs podcast. Not much about MWL in this one, but he does talk about NPE. He has been talking with @TheBigBoy (I believe he’s local to FFG) about his NPE/spicy article. Wants to give players better options so they don’t choose NPE decks. Specifically, mentioned curbing asset trash costs and giving tools to deal with them. Doesn’t want to kill Prison decks out-right. Wants to give players viable options overall.
There was also discussion on ice’s placement in the meta. Non-commital about putting Sifr on the MWL, since it came out recently (he said he’s considering it), but thinks it won’t be as big of an issue with new cards being released.
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Boggs shouldn’t be “talking to TheBigBoy” just like a newly-appointed farmer shouldn’t be in discussions with foxes about how to build fences around chicken coops.
Very disappointing interview, as is his soft stance on prison.
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This slander will not stand! 
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My Dinner with thebigboy: a 2hr film about a lead designer and a local talking about the MWL
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The FBI can’t prove any collusion between lead designer Boggs and TBB agents, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation
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you’re right, why would he talk to local competitive players with a pulse on the meta? he needs to be steered toward people with less information and perspective so we can get some more shitty weyland cards and maybe some blue expose tricks
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I might need to re-listen, but I thought he said that he didn’t believe NPE was a thing or need to be watched, but what did need to be watched was how powerful the prison decks were. What I recall hearing, paraphrased, were these:
‘If the best deck is an NPE deck, they’re going to play that deck. I’d rather give players other options.’
‘Asset spam should be a viable strategy, prison should be viable, but it definitely shouldn’t be as powerful as it is right now.’
2 Likes