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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Then maybe it is time to organise a (respectful) mailing campaign to FFG OP?
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That is exactly what SimonMoon suggests in the final paragraph.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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Asset spam prison decks?
Very true.
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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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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.
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:
- If Whizzard is the only thing keeping asset spam in line, asset spam is out of the line
- The level of asset spam is unbereable even with Whizzard in the game
- 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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