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

Netrunner General
22

I’ll chime in here with my perspective.

  1. FFG is moving slowly, yes. Way too slowly. They need to realize that they need to own up to their mistakes, and frankly that realization has been slowly growing the last years, it was just made so apparently obvious with Sifr.

  2. Mistakes in game-design will be made in a game such as this. We have to realize they are not gods of perfect balance. Designing a game of this type is hard and they probably moved resources to support the development of other competitive games once Netrunner was established, which might have exasperated this.
    However mistakes will definitely be made. They should not be blamed for that. The only thing FFG is guilty of is not reacting to the problems that arise quickly enough, they do a great job of designing this game, their only mistake is in maintaining it. You need to give them cred, and they might just surprise us…

  3. I’m feeling this too. As are many in my meta. Hence my attempt at starting the actual community ban-list discussion. As it stands i’m not very interested in Regionals either, there are way too many good games to continue playing top-tier Netrunner when it is not a good game at the moment. I realize that part of my feeling is my own responsibility to deal with however, and taking a break might be needed to prevent cynicism from growing.

  4. I’m stoked about Terminal Directive! Loving the cards. Loving the concept. Loving the funky weird mini-meta that will develop. Loving that FFG has come up with that wonderful idea. Stoked. Can also be enjoyed casually.

  5. If you are feeling the same, try out the ban-list/additional MWL. If you don’t agree with it engage in discussion in that thread. Try it out and as a community we can create the best possible set of rules for an enjoyable deep game. I’m deliberately trying to move slowly with the ban.list to gather data and let everyone have their say.

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23

Terminal Directive is what makes FFG’s recent incompetence the most frustrating. Imagine an alternate world FFG had:

  1. Updated the MWL and provided a banlist
  2. Given us dates for regionals and Terminal Directive’s release

When people stopped by a game store and saw 8 happy people playing Netrunner, those players would tell them ‘why yes you should play Netrunner, it’s a great game and there’s a cool upcoming Legacy product that can be played with one core and one copy of the big box. There are also upcoming tournaments if you want to get into the competitive scene.’

Instead, people are going to stop by a game store and see 2 grumpy people playing Netrunner, who tell them ‘don’t bother with Netrunner, there’s one cool looking product coming out god knows when, but otherwise the game is busted.’

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24

Negativity is contagious, and it is easy to overreact. FFG does not owe us anything, and if they listen they need to meet a reasonable attitude on the community-side.

Think of a potential FFG employee reading this. We are talking directly about many hours of dedicated good work from their side. Is this the message we want to send?

I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that you’re not allowed to feel what you do, but it’s important to keep this reasonable.

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25

link to reddit post - has some comments in it as well

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26

I’ve more or less given up on the game.

Not only is it shit now, but the new releases that have been spoiled aren’t exactly endearing me.

27

How is pointing out the very real issues in the game that FFG never acknowledges unreasonable? If a FFG employee would ever do an interview where they acknowledged the decline in the player base starting in Mumbad, or talked about how Sifr and runner-corp imbalance was hurting the game, or mentioned the huge card pool turning off new players, then harping on these things might come off as cruel. But given that their game is dying an incredibly preventable death, pointing out the problems and urging them to fix them doesn’t come of as unreasonable at all.

For example, Boggs went on Bad Publicity and said that the large card pool isn’t a problem because ‘you can just buy one pack at a time and enjoy getting into the game.’ This is a totally unreasonable solution - the player who buys one pack at a time is going to get crushed the second he walks into a game store, and there’s a very good chance he won’t come back. That’s why so many people are pushing for a tighter rotation, and Netrunner’s lead designer needs to know that.

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28

So, to answer the thread’s question: the real MWL was inside us all along

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29

I like to take this post to mean that anyone posting in this thread will soon be Door to Door’d. FFG secret Weyland confirmed

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30

I second all of this, and very eloquently put, Kenny. I still enjoy Netrunner and I want it to succeed, but it’s just… not the same game that it used to be and there seems to be no acknowledgement by FFG that this isn’t a healthy meta.

Event attendance is dwindling, and I can personally attest that it has been hard to generate interest in local meets and GNKs (we used to get between four and eight usually, but I stopped organising meets when for two weeks in a row nobody showed up), and this has been the case for a while now. We used to get ~20-25 player GNKs with relative ease, but our last one got 6.

The meta being complete shit and increasing work pressure has done a lot to dissuade me from Netrunner, but I’m still holding out hope. I want to believe that things are going to change for the better. I don’t want to be saying these things about dwindling attendance.

I wish we got a bit of communication, to show that FFG acknowledge the problems and are working to fix it. The Netrunner that is played in tournaments these days is about as far from intended gameplay as perhaps is possible. ICE and ‘fair’ gameplay doesn’t exist any more. The MWL is overdue by at least a month and we haven’t heard anything publicly.

What I’d like to see, first and foremost, is scheduled dates for MWL updates. For example, after every three datapacks, every two/three months, or something else uniform. It would do a lot to inspire confidence to be shown that the MWL is coming, and also provide more of a systematic response to problems if and when they develop. MWL and OP things are announced seemingly at random times. We don’t (publicly) know one is even being considered, and to the layperson there’s no guarantee FFG will release another MWL. Give me something to be excited about, FFG.

This might sound negative, and I guess it kind of is? But, that’s not really the point of my post. I don’t hate Netrunner, I don’t want it to die, and quite the opposite. I’m just concerned. A lot of players are concerned, and they have every right to be.

Come on, Boggs, show us what you can do.

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31

I don’t expect any new MWL stuff to come out until rotation happens in about 4 months-ish.

The reason I think this is the case is that, simply put, rotation is going to impact many established deck archetypes leading to either their dismantling or rendering them sub optimal. I speculate that the design team wants to see how the meta looks like after rotation to address meta imbalances.

32

What I am wondering most about is the lack of any community management effords at FFG. I think that a publisher of this size should have the means to establish this. Because I cannot believe they don’t observe the forums and see (and analyze) what people are talking about - this is either blind, or arrogant and at least not healthy for your product progress.
Having a great game is simply more than just belching it out to the masses and designing some torunament mats and tokens. You’ve got to stay close to your audience, take them serious and give them the feeling you involve them to bind them emotionally to your product. That is how you make fans, not just customers.

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33

Then maybe it is time to organise a (respectful) mailing campaign to FFG OP?

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34

That is exactly what SimonMoon suggests in the final paragraph.

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35

They may have the means, but for some reason they don’t seem to think it’s a priority. They don’t appear to even really monitor their own official forums at fantasyflightgames.com, and I haven’t heard of them participating in the also-kind-of-official forums at cardgamedb.com, so I wouldn’t assume that they’re following unofficial forums.

Actually, I’d take it as a good sign for their community engagement if I saw signs that they were adequately staffing their official forums. That seems like the very least they should be doing for all their games, community-engagement-wise.

36

I’ve taken to daily tweets. Prob. a bad idea, but, I came here to complain about the MWL and bring some good ideas, and I’m fresh out of good ideas.

#terminaldirective is cool; is it getting new players into a 4.5 yr old game? #rotationtooslow #mwlupdateplease #banlist @FFGames @FFGOP

— spagcore (@spagcore) March 15, 2017
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37

I’m going to sorta go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps the issue is that FFG is actually stretched relatively thin and the sort of community engagement that we as players are looking for is just not on their radar at all. It isn’t a bad idea to organize some sort of message from all of us but personally, just with my own dealings with the organization, I get the impression that their management isn’t that interested in fostering communities like Netrunner, especially when they have so many other products and so many other more popular products. To clarify, I do think their designers and developers are doing their best but as an organization FFG has failed to properly curate interest and environments, mostly relying on the community to do it for them.

I don’t want to be this pessimistic about it but honestly I haven’t seen much out of them to suggest otherwise.

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38

Can’t really do much harm at this stage, can it? As i’ve said my only good one is to take this into our own hands. Not really liking it, but i see no better options currently. It has lots of negative conequeces such as splitting the playerbase, not being run at official events and such. But i really just want to play a good, balanced game…

I agree. I think they do not have the long-term plan of forming communities and keep their games ‘living’ like magic. They aim for something in between and use the shotgun-effect of games to see what sticks. It could also be inexperience seeing as they have had large success that maybe they were not ready for, and we have seen them adapting along the way (MWL for example).
I also think the community support from Damon and now Boggs is stellar. They have really gone out on a limb to be available and engage with the community, even in their free time. It is clear they love what they do, and want to do their best. If there is a problem at FFG it is likely higher up (corporate strategy).

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39

Sensie Actors Union and Bio-Ethics were both released 11 data packs ago.
NBN: Controlling the Message was released 7 data packs ago.
Temujin, Beth and Rumor Mill were released 6 data packs ago.
Even Aaron and Sifr are from 2 data packs ago.

FFG has had plenty of time to fix the balance issues that have increasingly harmed the health of the game. The problem is not time, the problem is that FFG seems to be afraid of admitting their mistakes and taking the necessary steps to fix them.

I think this is why, for example, they don’t ban cards. They think it will reflect poorly on them and make them lose the reputation of LCGs being “a better system than Magic”. There’s a lot of people who think bans are a huge mark against a game and most of them will let everyone know in their Boardgamegeek posts.

At this point in time, I fear that unless drastic measures are taken, Netrunner will be dead by the time Legend of the Five Rings arrive. People love the game, but the health of the metagame has been worsening since Mumbad and people are tired of waiting for fixes since then.

Just imagine how much more fun the game would be if Whizzard+Parasite/Sifr+Aaron+Temujin+Employee Strike couldn’t exist.

The worst thing about this is all the fixes are very easy. Again, Temujin was released 6 packs ago, why hasn’t it been put on the MWL?

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40

This seems mostly right to me (except CTM being that old).

They need to trust their core players to keep the game going, and not the periphery-players who are vocal and know little about game-design and specific balance. It is impossible to make a game of this complexity without making mistakes. I’m impressed by how few mistakes there are.

Then again, who wants to buy into L5R if it risks the same fate and slow response?

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41

Asset spam prison decks?

Very true.

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