:3
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In all seriousness though, this kind of thread is going to turn into either a circlejerk or a pissing contest, and the only way to really find out who’s good is worlds or a stimhack league
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I think any ELO system would need to come from FFG along with stronger organized play, and some kind of online format. Plugged In was great, but it doesn’t seem like FFG really built on that foundation. From my perspective I personally see the Netrunner community shrinking. A lot of top players are less vocal online, there are fewer people showing up at local store nights (myself included), and lately queuing for a match on OCTGN takes 2x-3x times as long as it used to.
For comparison, I’ve been playing a boat load of Hearthstone lately, which is a vastly inferior game, but with a great laddering system. You win until you get to a point where you can’t continue to beat the competition, or have no competition left to beat. This combined with constant tournaments and the power of the Blizzard community has made it a pretty addictive game, even if it’s less skill intensive and rewarding than Netrunner can be. The reason being is that it’s dead simple to play mostly competitive games until you improve (something that is hard to do consistently with Netrunner). A similar ELO based match making tool combined with an online platform from FFG that better mirrors actual gameplay would be really good.
When you look at MtG (and now Hearthstone I guess) the other big thing is that people can actually play it professionally. That doesn’t seem really feasible with the LCG model and we may be stuck living in a world where we have this really fun game, but lack the environment that encourages consistently higher levels of play.
As for telling who is actually good, isn’t it generally pretty obvious?
People give too much credit to “building” a deck. You can take the majority of decks posted online and plug them into various deck building sites to find countless variations by other less vocal players. Being able to identify weaknesses and tune a deck goes hand in hand with good play in my experience, and many times takes more work than just putting together the base concept.
I think you are right a lot (most?) of the time about deck building, but there are a few people out there that have a gift to come up with something special. It is the combination of willingness to try new things, never discounting ideas out-right, and seeing the game on a broader level. My teammates come up with things I have never seen elsewhere, sometimes it is entire decks, sometimes it is tweaks to a common deck that just make so much sense. I have a lot more trouble with that aspect of the game, and thus a lot of respect for it. I am glad to have them around, certainly it has made us all better players.
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I don’t even think Worlds is all that good, as it’s quite inconsistent as to who attends-- my meta had 0 people at Worlds last year, and so did many other areas that have strong communities. I’m hoping that’ll change this year, but realistically who knows?
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I doubt my opinion counts for much, but I would argue that the pool at Worlds was quite good. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the competition there far surpassed any other tournament in the States. Obviously, it’s more difficult to compare with the international scene. The only two repeat Regionals winners in the US this year both played at Worlds last year. On a more local level for myself, the only two repeat winners of the nine Store Championships in Colorado were both at Worlds last year. (Both of us finished in the Top 40, neither of us made the cut - a blasted timed win was the difference for me between 38th and 24th)
Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of high-quality caliber players missing from across the country - not everybody can (or wants to) make it to Minnesota in November. It would obviously be more ideal to have some of the national winners from other countries flown in to make for more of an international spectacle. But, that said, the level of competition amid the players there was simply outstanding. I think the number of Regionals, Store Championship, and Plugged-In winners over the past several months that were in attendance there more than vouches for the level of competition, and I’ve seen no higher quality pool of opponents in any other stateside tournament.
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I should clarify that I was referring to Worlds’ quality as a method of evaluating who’s the best, not to the level of play at Worlds-- sorry for any confusion.
I consider the level of play at Worlds to be very high, and indeed probably the highest of any tournament. That said, it’s still far from a comprehensive event.
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OK, it’s pretty obvious we all agree FFG’s organized play program needs to be better. Stating problems without offering solutions isn’t all that helpful, however. For me, the question is: is there any way for me to actually help achieve that goal?
I’m already investing my free time into creating a local organized play community, but that most probably isn’t enough. For one, no matter how great the local scene is (running a league with a Glicko-2 ranking system for something like 100 weeks straight by now), it’s simply not a part of something more… global. Also, there’s only so much I can do within the confines of the current general OP program (or lack thereof) - hell, we didn’t even have a Regional this year, because the distributor “lost our application” (that they confirmed they received, back in february…) and there is basically no way for me to make certain that doesn’t happen again in the future.
I’d love to be able to help in a more global/organized capacity. I guess my question is now aimed at people that are in closer contact with the FFG folks ( Playtesters, maybe? Looking at you now, @spags). I understand that FFG doesn’t have in-house capacity to tend to their OP program in a more serious manner, but would they be willing to at least work with volunteers on it, make it either community-powered, or at least let us do the drudge work of coming up with a good OP program and laying the groundwork?
Could we for instance get together a think-tank of volunteers, come up with a specification/design document of what we’d like the organized play program to look like one day, get into contact with someone at the company and start working on making it happen?
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Would an official online version help to implement rankings? An official PC/iPad version would help to connect people and organise play further
There are more playtesters on these boards than you think. 
I don’t know the specific OP guys. I mean, I know them by sight, but not by name (Stuart and Ian, apparently). I have heard from others that they are responsive. I believe they should/would be willing to ask for volunteers, but, they also may not want any of this done out of haus, even if it greatly benefits them. This is the email address. organizedplay@fantasyflightgames.com
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I wonder who these mysterious playtesters are… I hear they all smell very good and look amazing in tuxedos 
I probably mentioned it in the other thread… here in germany/europe there is a site called t3, which is a system agnostic site for tournament organization, that keeps records and ladders.
It is done by one person (or was in the beginning) and it is probably not that hard. I mean, from the technical side.
What do you really need? An MSSQL server for the database, you need to program an application that can be used to organize tournaments and enter stats and on our server, we need to run a program that actually calculates the ELO or whatever it is that we would be using. And a website to automatically display the stats… that would be the hardest part for me, I don’t know much php or whatever it is those web designer type people use these days.
The rest? Couple of weekends of work (say 4-5 months, allowing for real life and stuff) and if I am not the only programmer ever to play Netrunner I might not even have to do it alone
Afterwards getting people to use the thing and to admin it and weed out the fake tournaments… that might be more of a problem… I have no experience with that.
As for the question of who is really good… I rarely go to tournaments and yet the current german champion is in my group and he doesn’t always beat me. So… does that make me decent? Who really knows. The problem is, 4 guys in there basement can easily profit from the knowledge of the community by browsing online, reading, watching etc, but they never need to interact with the community, so we do not really know… for all we know, two guys who meet once a week in a basement are the best netrunner players ever. I imagine one being played by Ian McKellen (rezzes tollbooth, yells: “You shall not pass.”) and the other being a troubled young kid whom he teaches to get him out of a life of crime (probably played by Leonardo DiCaprio, because he seems to be in every movie ever). Perhaps we see them at the next worlds, it is going to be dramatic… sorry for the tangent. It kinda just happened.
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What really sucks is desperately wanting to play ANR every day and get better but being stuck in a city with absolutely no ANR community or player pool…
(and hating OCTGN)
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Stuck in a town with no ANR community? Do what I did - build one from the ground up. It may not be easy, but it’s simple.
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Every night?
Seattle is a fairly large city and only supports 3 game nights a week in the city proper. 5 to 7 seems excessive.
Maybe move to New York City?
Well I don’t necessarily mean a proper game night every week. I would just like to play at least a game or two or ANR every day. It would be awesome if ANR were anywhere near as big as MTG, and you could just show up to any game shop ever and find someone to play with.
In that case, the best advice I can give you is “Marry an awesome woman” 
* high-fives @CrimsonWraith*
edit: to be a bit more constructive, though - you actually just need one other person to get the ball rolling. Grab two decks, grab a friend, and go to an MTG game night or tournament. Sit down at a free table and start playing. You will generate interest, I guarantee - cyberpunk is always hot as a theme, and the game just looks straight-up weird when being played. If people ask you what you’re playing, go into sales-pitch mode. The four best points to play up are:
- The asymmetric gameplay (that always catches interest, especially once you get to the point about how agendas are only present in the corp’s deck!)
- The click system and how you’re gated by that, rather than stupid stuff like “having to draw lands” and “only drawing one card per turn”
- The distribution model (a.k.a. “no you don’t have to sell a kidney and two to three firstborn to get a complete set”)
- The awesomeness of the community in general (very little jerks, especially when compared to the competitive MtG scene)
Once you get two people interested, do the same shebang with two tables. After that, you’ve basically won.
p.s. buy a second core set, build some easy to play decks to lend to people that you manage to hook into trying. Alternatively, get hold of the demo decks that FFG just put out.
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if you’re willing to drive ~30-45 minutes in dallas, you can play netrunner out here every night except tuesdays and fridays. I think there’s a tuesday meetup downtown as well, but fnm crowds out every store on fridays. Living in dallas is nice
I think the best way to see who’s good is start a league which last for 1 year. You’d have the elo system to gives scores, and you can expect people to bring tried instead of experimental decks.
My brother and I (only person I currently have to play with) have gone to 2 board game nights in a row (a night at the biggest local shop where people just come and play whatever). We played some ANR both nights, in a room of 30+ people, half of which were MTG kids in the corner. Over both nights only 1 person wandered over and wondered what we were playing. Keep in mind there is supposed to be ANR every board game night, but no one else showed the past 2 weeks my brother and I went. We will see what happens next Thursday, which is supposed to be a tournament (every other week).