5 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

So they had comparatively high Kotei attendance. You know-- when you sit the vast majority of the players down and make it **** clear to them that they exist only as puppets and punching bags for the singular group the writers are making the whole game a power fantasy about... it is not surprising everyone else left and the only ones still showing up were the ones playing as the center of that power fantasy.

Snipping this out because I think it's a valuable point. It's undeniably true that from a story standpoint, the Spider kept getting a lot of victories (in a narrative sense, at least -- I didn't play the CCG and can't list actual kotei results etc), while the other clans stood around looking like useless dupes. Result:

1) People who play the faction that keeps getting the cool story are going to feel like things are going great. They stick around and have a lot of fun.

2) People who join the game see that this faction is where it's at right now, and are more inclined to go that direction themselves.

3) People who play other factions might change their minds and hop on board the coolness train.

4) People who play other factions and don't want to switch feel discouraged. The game isn't as fun as it used to be. Their guys don't get much in the way of cool moments. They're more inclined to drift away.

So of course the Spider are the biggest and most enthusiastic playerbase in the game. Why wouldn't they be? But that is not necessarily the same thing as saying that the Spider Clan was a great concept for building enthusiasm and audience for the game overall. It's easy to cross those wires and assume that the best thing to do for the IP as a whole would be to keep on in the same direction -- but I'd need more data to be convinced of that.

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

That was more or less my reaction, too. And I don't even play the card game. <lol>

Hahahaha, right? I mean, I just dabbled in the card game for a while, but that's ridiculous enough that I got an immediate visceral reaction to it! I can only imagine the shitstorm it would devolve into if that got announced as as the official path forward!

(I can only admit, to my own shame, that I would probably become something like a bonobo in a bad taco day... )

5 hours ago, Isawa Kioshi said:

They would have been "alliances" made up primarily of those clans. So if you wanted to play Spider/Scorpion/Dragon, you'd play the "(insert name here)" alliance, with one of the three clans' sensei to represent that clan.

Yes. I understood that part perfectly. Thus my disbelief, shock and horror. My two favorite clans would be unplayable unless I compromised and also played the faction I hate the most in the game and believe is the source of everything sh*tty in it.

I mean... freaking seriously, AEG!?

11 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Snipping this out because I think it's a valuable point. It's undeniably true that from a story standpoint, the Spider kept getting a lot of victories (in a narrative sense, at least -- I didn't play the CCG and can't list actual kotei results etc), while the other clans stood around looking like useless dupes. Result:

1) People who play the faction that keeps getting the cool story are going to feel like things are going great. They stick around and have a lot of fun.

2) People who join the game see that this faction is where it's at right now, and are more inclined to go that direction themselves.

3) People who play other factions might change their minds and hop on board the coolness train.

4) People who play other factions and don't want to switch feel discouraged. The game isn't as fun as it used to be. Their guys don't get much in the way of cool moments. They're more inclined to drift away.

So of course the Spider are the biggest and most enthusiastic playerbase in the game. Why wouldn't they be? But that is not necessarily the same thing as saying that the Spider Clan was a great concept for building enthusiasm and audience for the game overall. It's easy to cross those wires and assume that the best thing to do for the IP as a whole would be to keep on in the same direction -- but I'd need more data to be convinced of that.

Just wanted to say that I abso-freaking-lutely agree.

10 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Snipping this out because I think it's a valuable point. It's undeniably true that from a story standpoint, the Spider kept getting a lot of victories (in a narrative sense, at least -- I didn't play the CCG and can't list actual kotei results etc), while the other clans stood around looking like useless dupes. Result:

1) People who play the faction that keeps getting the cool story are going to feel like things are going great. They stick around and have a lot of fun.

2) People who join the game see that this faction is where it's at right now, and are more inclined to go that direction themselves.

3) People who play other factions might change their minds and hop on board the coolness train.

4) People who play other factions and don't want to switch feel discouraged. The game isn't as fun as it used to be. Their guys don't get much in the way of cool moments. They're more inclined to drift away.

So of course the Spider are the biggest and most enthusiastic playerbase in the game. Why wouldn't they be? But that is not necessarily the same thing as saying that the Spider Clan was a great concept for building enthusiasm and audience for the game overall. It's easy to cross those wires and assume that the best thing to do for the IP as a whole would be to keep on in the same direction -- but I'd need more data to be convinced of that.

what @#$@#$ game were you guys playing? name for me, please, these narrative victories. please. once we achieve great clan status, we proceeded to get horsewhipped by the storyteam until the games sale. we lost our founder, our god, the taint, our shugenjas, the onyx and obsidian champions, 80% of our iconic personalities and in exchange we got a handful of generic garbagebags that they never did anything with. what did we get in return? we didn't die. this is what Hobsnobbery is insulted by. that we weren't expunged. NAME FOR ME PLEASE what we won goddesses part 4. the territory in the ivory kingdoms that we didn't get? the holdings in the empire that our players worked SO HARD during winter court to setup that the story team abandoned. an heir that SHOULD HAVE BEEN the main heir, except story team cheated us and invented a spare to give us, then played fast and loose with the results of the brother's war to make sure he didn't win the throne when he got close there anyway?

go ahead, i'm waiting.

20 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

I didn't play the CCG...

Good to know that someone who didn't even play the game can tell us exactly what it was like to play the game.

20 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

5 hours ago, Isawa Kioshi said:

They would have been "alliances" made up primarily of those clans. So if you wanted to play Spider/Scorpion/Dragon, you'd play the "(insert name here)" alliance, with one of the three clans' sensei to represent that clan.

Yes. I understood that part perfectly. Thus my disbelief, shock and horror. My two favorite clans would be unplayable unless I compromised and also played the faction I hate the most in the game and believe is the source of everything sh*tty in it.

I mean... freaking seriously, AEG!?

did you not actually read up on what onyx's plot was gonna be? or are you just kneejerk reacting?

36 minutes ago, cielago said:

what @#$@#$ game were you guys playing? name for me, please, these narrative victories. please. once we achieve great clan status, we proceeded to get horsewhipped by the storyteam until the games sale. we lost our founder, our god, the taint, our shugenjas, the onyx and obsidian champions, 80% of our iconic personalities and in exchange we got a handful of generic garbagebags that they never did anything with. what did we get in return? we didn't die. this is what Hobsnobbery is insulted by. that we weren't expunged. NAME FOR ME PLEASE what we won goddesses part 4. the territory in the ivory kingdoms that we didn't get? the holdings in the empire that our players worked SO HARD during winter court to setup that the story team abandoned. an heir that SHOULD HAVE BEEN the main heir, except story team cheated us and invented a spare to give us, then played fast and loose with the results of the brother's war to make sure he didn't win the throne when he got close there anyway?

go ahead, i'm waiting.

The list has been hashed and rehashed a thousand times -- I honestly don't believe you can't list for yourself all the things that everyone else sees as the Spider Clan winning, even while you list the things you see as losses at every turn. (You've argued against it too often not to know the key points already.) My actual purpose here is not to argue for the eight millionth time who is right. My purpose is to note that that the people who post to forums (as used to happen all the time on the AEG boards) going "hahaha, we're a Great Clan now and you have to eat it, our dude is the best" are of course going to be energized and enthusiastic about the game, and the people who see their clans having to suck at their jobs, over and over again, to make way for that . . . are going to drift away. So "the Spider fanbase is the biggest and most dedicated" is not necessarily proof that the direction the story has been going in for years now is a good one for the IP overall. It could just as easily be proof that the direction of the story has alienated lots of people who aren't fans of that faction. I have yet to see anybody trot out meaningful data that would settle the question.

And in the end, this is about all we know is true: FFG is going to do whatever they think will earn them the most money, by getting lots and lots of people to buy their game. This means not only the current fans, not only the past fans, but new fans . If attracting those people means keeping the Spider and letting them get all the victories you've been denied, they'll do that. If it means dumping the Spider entirely, they'll do that. "They wouldn't dare piss off this faction's fanbase" -- no matter which faction is being named! -- is an empty declaration without data that none of us have access to.

31 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Good to know that someone who didn't even play the game can tell us exactly what it was like to play the game.

Good to know that playing the RPG doesn't earn me the right to have an opinion on the franchise.

1 hour ago, cielago said:

did you not actually read up on what onyx's plot was gonna be? or are you just kneejerk reacting?

I did. I thought it was a massive pile of garbage. Oh! Speaking of which...

1 hour ago, cielago said:

what @#$@#$ game were you guys playing? name for me, please, these narrative victories. please. (...)

go ahead, i'm waiting.

" did you not actually read up on what onyx's plot was gonna be? or are you just kneejerk reacting? "

But, returning to your previous point, about me knowing or not the plot of Onyx. Yes, I did know. I just thought that I would be able to play my faction without having to suck the Spider Clan's rotten cock despite that. Apparently, AEG wouldn't have any of that. To which I can only say: good riddance. Better to not have L5R at all.

Is it up for argument that there was an unsatisfying middle ground for everyone, resulting from the Spider's long term existence as a great clan and doers of Things Rokugan Hates™? I thought it was just a given.

Spider enthusiasts were dissatisfied with the way tournament results were handled or their internally perceived losses? That's a shame. Other factions had their own druthers on specific perceived losses, too. It still panned out one way. Daigotsu gained a stronger hold over Jigoku than Fu Leng. The taint became invisible and kept spreading. Onyx edition was in the works. The Spider did not cleave to Rokugan's ways, nor did the clans expunge their presence before the buyout.

16 minutes ago, BitRunr said:

Is it up for argument that there was an unsatisfying middle ground for everyone, resulting from the Spider's long term existence as a great clan and doers of Things Rokugan Hates™? I thought it was just a given.

Spider enthusiasts were dissatisfied with the way tournament results were handled or their internally perceived losses? That's a shame. Other factions had their own druthers on specific perceived losses, too. It still panned out one way. Daigotsu gained a stronger hold over Jigoku than Fu Leng. The taint became invisible and kept spreading. Onyx edition was in the works. The Spider did not cleave to Rokugan's ways, nor did the clans expunge their presence before the buyout.

if the gist of your statement is that AEG kind of blew it with the story, generally speaking, and specifically where it concerned the spider, i dont think you're gonna find a lot of people to disagree with you.

tho, every time i make anything approaching an absolute statement around here some contrarian stands up to disagree with me, so i look forward to hearing what this one has to say.

3 minutes ago, cielago said:

if the gist of your statement is that AEG kind of blew it with the story, generally speaking, and specifically where it concerned the spider, i dont think you're gonna find a lot of people to disagree with you.

tho, every time i make anything approaching an absolute statement around here some contrarian stands up to disagree with me, so i look forward to hearing what this one has to say.

The best I got is:

I loved the story. Granted I started in EE so I don't have all the back story a lot of people do. Hell, I am trying to run the rpg and everytime I ask for advice there are mountains of things I just didn't know about.

But all that aside, during my time playing the ccg from EE to death, I genuinely enjoyed the story.

Though, now that I have read much more since the game died, I can see why people have frustrations, but I do think there are some fanatical people who refuse to be anything other than either extreme.

Again, I liked the story. It was fun. Fight me.

Just now, BayushiCroy said:

The best I got is:

I loved the story. Granted I started in EE so I don't have all the back story a lot of people do. Hell, I am trying to run the rpg and everytime I ask for advice there are mountains of things I just didn't know about.

But all that aside, during my time playing the ccg from EE to death, I genuinely enjoyed the story.

Though, now that I have read much more since the game died, I can see why people have frustrations, but I do think there are some fanatical people who refuse to be anything other than either extreme.

Again, I liked the story. It was fun. Fight me.

i wish i could, but for all i rag, often incessantly, on AEG for their multitude of failures, look at me. i've been glued to this forum and twitter all **** day waiting for updates about the game and it aint because i loved the game's mechanics. its because of the story. so apparently they did something right. i think AEG often succeeded in spite of themselves, and we loved the game for its eccentricities. but what do i know, i'm a spider fan. you need a pretty high emotional pain threshold to love the latter day spider especially. the ration of great spider stories to "eh, jeez, whatever" was depressing.

There will be 8 clans from the start. Just like agot. Atleast that's what I'm guessing. So either spider or shadowlands. I think mantis will be neutral type characters. The lcg format and how card distribution is woks excellent for 8 clans. But who knows I may be wrong and it's mantis as the 8th and shadowlands as the neutral. I'm stoked either way!!!

18 minutes ago, Xrishadowchaser said:

There will be 8 clans from the start. Just like agot. Atleast that's what I'm guessing. So either spider or shadowlands. I think mantis will be neutral type characters. The lcg format and how card distribution is woks excellent for 8 clans. But who knows I may be wrong and it's mantis as the 8th and shadowlands as the neutral. I'm stoked either way!!!

Did you even look at the poster showing only 7 clan mons? If so, how can you still come to this conclusion? Granted, I would be totally stoked if it came out and there were really 8 factions and Spider was one of them, but I highly doubt it based on that poster.

7 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Did you even look at the poster showing only 7 clan mons? If so, how can you still come to this conclusion? Granted, I would be totally stoked if it came out and there were really 8 factions and Spider was one of them, but I highly doubt it based on that poster.

It's entirely possible that it's 7 great clans and spider reverts to evil shadow lands that doesn't get a mon but some cards are present. Like willing horde in agot.

Remember, really, we know nothing.

1 hour ago, BayushiCroy said:

It's entirely possible that it's 7 great clans and spider reverts to evil shadow lands that doesn't get a mon but some cards are present. Like willing horde in agot.

Remember, really, we know nothing.

Stop getting my hopes up! lol

It's just the formula ffg has been using for their lcgs. It used to be 4 factions to a core when lcgs first started. Then it went up to 6. Now with the latest game of thrones lcg the core set had all 8 factions. As did the Warhammer 40k lcg they did it had 8 factions. I'm just spit balling here and assuming we will get 8 in the box for l5r. And do we know where this box art came from and is it legit?

It came from Steve Horvath of FFG at the GAMA trade show. Doesn't get more legit.

1 hour ago, Xrishadowchaser said:

It's just the formula ffg has been using for their lcgs. It used to be 4 factions to a core when lcgs first started. Then it went up to 6. Now with the latest game of thrones lcg the core set had all 8 factions. As did the Warhammer 40k lcg they did it had 8 factions. I'm just spit balling here and assuming we will get 8 in the box for l5r. And do we know where this box art came from and is it legit?

If you're referring to the promo with the seven mons, that was from an Asmodee display at a game fair in Cannes- GAMA for Europe, so to speak.

It will be awesome if we get mantis and spider. I was just using their format for the other lcgs. I could be completely wrong. Either way we are getting l5r back!!!

1 hour ago, deraforia said:

It came from Steve Horvath of FFG at the GAMA trade show. Doesn't get more legit.

What came from Steve Horvath? 8 factions in the core?

24 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

What came from Steve Horvath? 8 factions in the core?

the box art

2 hours ago, Xrishadowchaser said:

And do we know where this box art came from and is it legit?

On 3/9/2017 at 6:04 PM, Tetsuro said:

Just keep in mind that 'There were going to be three or four factions' is technically true in the sense that there was a set with a Shadowlands Nitoshi and an Undead Moto Taigo is true (they were both in a very early layout for a set we never actually started officially designing, so neither had final approval from ST or even any abilities). It's 'technically' true.

Hm. Which does put the spoiler comments in the previews thread in a different context.

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 8:37 PM, cielago said:

did you not actually read up on what onyx's plot was gonna be? or are you just kneejerk reacting?

Is there a link somewhere to what was established about the plot before The End?

On ‎3‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 0:17 AM, Sparks Duh said:

Did you even look at the poster showing only 7 clan mons? If so, how can you still come to this conclusion? Granted, I would be totally stoked if it came out and there were really 8 factions and Spider was one of them, but I highly doubt it based on that poster.

The 8th clan is actually Mantis. Only the 7 are shown because the Mantis took their plan to collect the Minor Clans a step further and are now made up of all the Great Clans! All the clans are part of Mantis, now! Bwahahaha!

...but seriously, I could easily see an 8th clan as either Spider or Shadowlands being the villainous clan, and thus not really part of the Empire.

On 3/15/2017 at 9:25 AM, cielago said:

what @#$@#$ game were you guys playing? name for me, please, these narrative victories. please. once we achieve great clan status, we proceeded to get horsewhipped by the storyteam until the games sale. we lost our founder, our god, the taint, our shugenjas, the onyx and obsidian champions, 80% of our iconic personalities and in exchange we got a handful of generic garbagebags that they never did anything with. what did we get in return? we didn't die. this is what Hobsnobbery is insulted by. that we weren't expunged. NAME FOR ME PLEASE what we won goddesses part 4. the territory in the ivory kingdoms that we didn't get? the holdings in the empire that our players worked SO HARD during winter court to setup that the story team abandoned. an heir that SHOULD HAVE BEEN the main heir, except story team cheated us and invented a spare to give us, then played fast and loose with the results of the brother's war to make sure he didn't win the throne when he got close there anyway?

go ahead, i'm waiting.

Your clan champion was the single force in all the empire who could stop the big bad. As a result he ascended to uber Godhood-- the singular Lord of all of hell.

You didn't "lose" you Clan Champion-- and, let's be clear here, EVERYONE loses their champion and certainly founder eventually, no other one rose to be literally The Devil himself within the fiction.

Losing the taint? Well, I think it is about time you admitted to being the selfish a**hole in this situation if you are going to bring that up. Being a **** part of the empire, being an actual clan, not being the "big bad" and not being hunted to death-- it absolutely means the particular group need to adhere to the same **** rules that allow one to be a "Great Clan" and not openly declared enemy of the Empire.

And not being a bunch of magical evil disease spreading scumbags is absolutely #1 on that list. The fact that you even think it was a remotely acceptable state of affairs to have ANY so called "clan" within Rokugan who is standing at the top of the heap, flipping everyone off and shouting "We are better than all of you losers because we get to use evil demonic magic without any fear of censure or repercussion and all you all need to accept that and totally give us all the berth and respect and devotion in the world and get on your hands and knees and spit-shine our boots" tells me that you were so utterly completely immersed in your clan devotion that you entirely lost sight of the game as a whole, completely forgot that the rest of the people in the game needed to be allowed to contribute and actually enjoy the game. Which absolutely cannot ever happen if everyone is told "there is a singular group who gets to utterly ignore all norms for behavior and revel in the very things that would kill you while you are restricted from taking any of these shortcuts... and THEY benefit from getting these shortcuts entirely while your restricted behavior only results in you being all that more ineffective at anything."

Without the Spider Clan, at least one can make a sliding scale of what dastardly behavior a clan can get away with and an inverse scale of how much benefit they get. The Spider throws all that off by getting the best of everything.

The Spider effectively got ALL of the colonies. Everyone got corrupted and turned into "lost" simply because someone came up with the "brilliant" idea of spearheading settling a new land with the most evil and corrupted people in all of the empire. Literally choosing the most openly tainted of all the Spider and sending them. And within the Onyx fiction, the Spider got all of Rokugan!! And yet you somehow demand more? What short of the absolute extinction of every other faction would you be satisfied with?

And, yes, it IS insulting that the Spider were not expunged. That they were never accepted as a clan, that they were not hunted down and slaughtered down to the handful of survivors that fled to the Shadowlands. That in any way, shape or form they rose up and up and up by villainous actions and yet never got toppled, never got defeated, never saw actual failure of any sort. But, in that, let me point out the obvious...

The best and most unique elements of the Spider Clan, the things that most set it apart from every other clan, are the things that every aspect of Rokugani society says should never be acceptable-- that anyone who engages in or does these things is deserving of nothing but quick execution. Having the maho-tsukai and the shadow ninja and undead and having pet nonhuman creatures and summoning oni... Well, naturally, those are all things that SHOULD be playable aspects in the game. Problem is, that everything about those elements absolutely forbids every other clan treating this heretical and evil group bent on the absolute destruction of the world as a good neighbor... and forbidding that anyone show any prejudice or hatred or succeed in any strike against them is absolutely contradictory to making a good story or a good game.

Yet, what did the idiot player-base demand? That they go and be purified and lose all uniqueness and distinction, because becoming a Clan at all requires the absolute abandonment of all things Clans are not allowed to do. And everything Clans are not allowed to do what pretty much everything the Spider had going for it.

The absolute best possible solution would be for the Spider to eternally remain some group that lies entirely outside of the empire, is killed on sight if ever detected or discovered, and makes use of abilities collected from several enemies of the empire and the fundamental protection of the Shadowlands (anyone who tries to invade them is likely to become one of them before they even reach the Spider citadel.) Every step they took away from that concept was a massive mistake and absolutely ruined the entire theme of the game and every story that could be born out of it.

Yet, what was this base of Spider-Fans demanding?... Well, the thing that was the worst for their faction and the game as a whole, naturally.

It is as though a bunch of people joined the Lion and demanded that AEG turn them into pacifist courtiers. And then, when they get just that, they whine and winch that their current crop of Lions isn't as butt-kicking as the last.

Also, the story team has NEVER adhered to what comes out of Winter Court. So to tell me that in some officially sanctioned RPG the contingent of selfish, self-centered jerks managed to bully and cajole everyone else into rolling over to their favor to an even GREATER extent than the CCG was already allowing for doesn't really phase me.

Moreover, I do notice that no one even attempted the most simple challenge of naming a single storyline post Samurai that did not entirely revolve around, empower or glorify the Spider. After so many days of hanging that out there as "please show me that the rest of the factions were not turned into puppets and punching bags for the Spider", even those attacking my point of view could absolutely not name even a single such storyline shows just how inconsiderate your utterly low bar for Spider "losses" really is. It really just amounts to nothing more than finding the tiny, TINY fraction of story threads that could imaginably have gone even more ridiculously in favor of the singular faction that got to be the star of everything and resolved in their favor to an even greater extent than they did.

Seriously... where is every other Clans wins that even get to remotely come close to openly evil maho-using psychopaths who murdered thousands of people across the empire just getting accepted without question or condition as full members of the empire and heavily favored in all political appointments? They aren't there, are they? No other Clan Champion got to be the singular being who could defeat an empire-threatening big bad while the rest of the clans were reduced to just sideline witnesses?

Come on. In your supposed "losses" you could not name a single one where anyone got anything up on the Spider... while the Spider' very fundamental existence in the form they were was a clear-cut loss for many, MANY groups within the empire and made every other faction look stupidly incompetent.

5 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

...

Did somebody say something?