6 hours ago, Matrim said:

They did mention in the reddit thing that having fate on characters can protect them from certain things (I expect such as 'send a character home who does not have a fate counter) to stop your highly expensive unique getting blocked.

As another example, The previewed Ring of Water has such a mechanic printed unto it: If you win the challenge you can either unbow anyone or bow a character without fate on it.

Quote

When L5R first came out, it didn't have an established storyline. So most of the players who were drawn to it were samurai fans and card players looking for a new challenge. Since the samurai fans didn't know who these people not the story were, they had no expectations of how battles should play out so pretty much anything was expected and the level of play was elevated from the onset. Now we're looking at a reboot of a game with 20+ years of story that was largely directed by those players. That's something L5R did not have to deal with the first time around. There are way more expectations that people have for the game this time....and it's already starting to show. From what I've seen to this point I think FFG is doing a good job at trying to clean up some of the mechanical and gameplay problems that L5R has had in the past while still keeping the essence of the game. Until I see all of the rules and cards I can't give an educated opinion about if they pulled it off and even if I was disappointed with what I've seen so far, I wouldn't pass judgement without playing it first.

For those of you that feel let down by what's being offered in the reboot, I hope you can let go of the expectations you've built in the past and can appreciate the new game enough that your be willing to support the game for the future.

For those of you like me who need to go but a new pair of pants because they couldn't contain their excitment I can only say this.......

UUUUUUUTTZZZZZZ!!!!!!

BANZAAAIIII !

-doublepost-

On 4/19/2017 at 1:53 PM, retoxidi said:

True that! If anything might worry me, is the potential analysis paralysis here, when you'll have a ton load of decisions to make:

- How much to "overpay" for this unit?

- Where do I decare a Conflict?

- WHAT KIND of conflict?

- Throw in an elemental ring there too?

-Honor dial shenanigans?

I'm mainly concerned about my casual group, who tend to think on much lesser things waaaay looong...

I agree with this. I'm not sure this new reiteration will be less complicated than old l5r.

10 minutes ago, SavageTofu said:

I agree with this. I'm not sure this new reiteration will be less complicated than old l5r.

Yeah um infinite combos existed in the old version and you could be attacked by 2 billion oni at once. You could also duel people 15 times and draw and play your entire fate deck in one turn while hitting 40 honor for the win. Water monk had like an 85% chance of wiping 2 or 3 provinces before your economy could get started. Some games could see your honor below 0 on turn 1 preventing you from playing any personalities ever. Oh and sneak attack + night battle or crushing attack meant you might never get to take actions in battle. I'm sorry but the new version will be less complicated, if for no other reason than modern game design prevents most of these abuses.

1 hour ago, SavageTofu said:

I agree with this. I'm not sure this new reiteration will be less complicated than old l5r.

Some complexity is good in a game though right?

Just now, Silverfox13 said:

Some complexity is good in a game though right?

I like that there is potential for complexity. I hope that it's easy to teach out of the gates so we can build up a playgroup pretty quickly. I like that the complexity tends come from decisions made by each player rather than a slog of minutia. Each decision point is a question basically: How many turns can I afford to have this character in play for? How many cards do I need? How much honor can I afford to give up for them? Which battles can I win, and which can I potentially block? Which ring effects do I need, and which do I need to not get hit with?

It adds up to a lot of decisions being made that each have potential to make or break your entire line up. It might be that any one suboptimal decision isn't enough to lead to a loss, but a few in a row or on the same turn might be. I'm still turning it all over in my head.

It would be nice to see some more strongholds. More announcements please!

Do you think the game is locked at this stage? Or do you think they still have time to change something if they uncover through feedback that something isn't quite right?

I'm inclined to think they're pretty much committed to what they have if they're willing to preview it.

Just now, shineyorkboy said:

I'm inclined to think they're pretty much committed to what they have if they're willing to preview it.

How wide do you think their play-test group is? I always wonder why they don't make mass digital play-test groups to ensure they have the most balance. I'm not saying anything is broken, but I just find it weird how they don't do mass testing to ensure everything is working properly.

I have no idea how big it is, but considering how hard FFG works to avoid leaks I'd imagine they'd try to keep the circle relatively small.

And it's not like AEG's play-testing practices didn't routinely let broken combos through.

39 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

I have no idea how big it is, but considering how hard FFG works to avoid leaks I'd imagine they'd try to keep the circle relatively small.

And it's not like AEG's play-testing practices didn't routinely let broken combos through.

Yeah, I think you are right. I personally would rather have a properly tested game than worry about some leaks. You could play with artless cards, codes instead of names, etc. and the leaks of how the game plays aren't exactly a big deal. I'm sure they know what they are doing, but I'm sure some "errata" will come out soon after the game because of this.

1 hour ago, slowreflex said:

Do you think the game is locked at this stage? Or do you think they still have time to change something if they uncover through feedback that something isn't quite right?

Feedback from people in the forum? Who do not know the whole ruleset and have not played a single game? Or you mean their actual testers?

I would say they have it quite locked down as they should have already developed the core ad the first cycle of the game.

1 hour ago, slowreflex said:

How wide do you think their play-test group is? I always wonder why they don't make mass digital play-test groups to ensure they have the most balance. I'm not saying anything is broken, but I just find it weird how they don't do mass testing to ensure everything is working properly.

Making mass groups may not always mean most balance. More limited and focused groups also allow them to test what they need to test when they need to test it while not being clogged by massive feedback from outside groups. It also means they are more free to start over and try new stuff while testing without a whole legion of enraged fans behind.

1 hour ago, slowreflex said:

Do you think the game is locked at this stage? Or do you think they still have time to change something if they uncover through feedback that something isn't quite right?

Um, they're showing the actual cards in their marketing posts. The game is done, the rules are printed, and they probably have the first two six-run "Honor" packs (or whatever else they're calling them) already designed and have art assets assigned to those. Do you have no idea on the lead time required for a collectable card game? By the time the base set is out in Q4 this year and in our hands, the next year to eighteen months of releases will already be in the can, waiting their queue at the printer, and the design team will be working on the cards for the fourth set in the run. And yes, that means whatever equivalent of "storyline" tourneys FFG will be running will require about 18-24 months for their results to filter through the print queue and end up in card form.

You just can't up and make changes to your game that's having a major release in six months without those six months becoming a year or more. Not unless you own your own mass printer and can change your print order on a whim, which FFG does not (hell, even Magic doesn't own their own printers).

The cards were largely locked in over six months ago, given the typical lead time FFG has talked about on their other LCGs. A few copies of proof sets might be sitting around in Hovarth's office in Roseville. Designers at FFG (and over at Magic) work 2 years or so ahead of the release curve, to give time for the printing process. Perhaps Yu-GI-OH does things differently; as far as I can tell from Konami's QA/QC they might just be making up the cards one month before printing and shipping them as is (snark aside, that's potentially possible given the micro sizes of most Yu-GI-OH releases).

2 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

the first two six-run "Honor" packs (or whatever else they're calling them)

Dynasty packs.

1 hour ago, slowreflex said:

How wide do you think their play-test group is? I always wonder why they don't make mass digital play-test groups to ensure they have the most balance. I'm not saying anything is broken, but I just find it weird how they don't do mass testing to ensure everything is working properly.

Magic: the Gathering, the largest collectable card game by an order of magnitude, at least, over its competitors, and the only one with cash prizes well over $100,000+ at their major tournaments, has professional game theorists and ex-Pro Tour players designing and testing their cards. These are the best people the most successful CCG in the world can afford. They also apparently have an extremely well-controlled, vetted, and NDA'd group of playtesters who help Design and Development in playtesting. And even given that, they routinely miss broken combos, "obvious" deck archetypes, and miscall what cards will be popular or not in their work.

And that's to be expected. There's billions of card combinations and potential lines of play in a CCG/LCG playtesting. And there's no way even the best-funded and largest playtest group in the world, Magic's, can come up with as many ideas and weird deck experiments as the living, organic card-playing computer that is the millions of active Magic players all playing the cards and sharing their ideas can. They do the best they can, learn from their mistakes, and carry on. And if Wizards can't catch all the potentially bad combos, the lesser resources at FFG certainly cannot either.

No playtesting group will ever do as good a job of playtesting your game as getting hundreds of thousands of people to play it will. And the reason they don't have "mass digital play-test groups", for Magic or FFG, is that the people in the companies have a weird belief that they want to eat with a roof over their heads, and doing so when working on a card game requires us, the players, to buy the cards they're working on in the largest possible release grouping, not releasing tons of free virtual cards.

8 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Dynasty packs.

Thank you!

14 hours ago, BuzzsawMF said:

Sorry oDESGOSTO, I can't take you seriously anymore. You are raging about a failed game that hasn't come out yet, that you have never played. You are using vague "facts" that you can barely back up and are proven wrong by your own facts. It is just getting rather silly. I feel bad for you.

"Vague facts"?! So, showing the numbers of the biggest in-house World competition to point out the lack of players in said game is "vague facts"?! This sounds like Trump: "fake news, very fake"!

Also, where did I said the game has failed?
If you read with full attention you'll read that I said "this game will sold out and will sell a lot" . And then I've also said "let's see what Time has to say about it".
I'm not pointing out that it failed. I'm pointing out that will, as proof in this thread, it will sell out easilly. I could tell you the reasons why but then I had to call things for their names and people will not like that.

And don't feel bad for me. I don't feel nothing for you, a random anonymous forum user.
I gave my opinion, deal with it. Opinions are not right or wrong, are just opinions.
But facts... facts are objective.

39 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Um, they're showing the actual cards in their marketing posts. The game is done, the rules are printed, and they probably have the first two six-run "Honor" packs (or whatever else they're calling them) already designed and have art assets assigned to those. Do you have no idea on the lead time required for a collectable card game?

There is no reason to be condescending. It's a simple question and doesn't require attitude like this.

27 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

And the reason they don't have "mass digital play-test groups", for Magic or FFG, is that the people in the companies have a weird belief that they want to eat with a roof over their heads, and doing so when working on a card game requires us, the players, to buy the cards they're working on in the largest possible release grouping, not releasing tons of free virtual cards.

If you have some evidence that mass digital play-test groups = less revenue then I'd love to see it.

4 minutes ago, oDESGOSTO said:

But facts... facts are objective.

But facts are also useless unless used in context. Trying to link participation in a tournament as an indicator of overall cardgame financial success isn't a causal link you've established to anyone outside of yourself yet.

13 hours ago, Gaffa said:

In Netrunner, both players can draw a card as an action at any time (on top of game abilities that give you more cards). In addition, too much card draw can especially hurt the Corporation player, as that can lead to Agenda flood in your hand (which is a dangerous state for the Corp to be in, if you haven't played the game). There's a card in Netrunner that draws three cards for *zero* mana/credits (there's actually two, one for each side: Anonymous Tip and Diesel, but they're both mechanically the same). By your metric, Anonymous Tip must be a better card than Ancestral Recall, yet it's a card that rarely sees play in top-level Corp decks (certain types of Corp decks want it, but it's by no means common even there). Winning decks in Netrunner don't always need "pay zero: draw three cards" in their deck. I can't think of many Magic decks that wouldn't want that ability, though.

So, you're using a game where a wincon is to fetch a card from a players hand to prove that card advantage is a bad thing... seems legit!
You could also tell that drawing cards in Battletech CCG is a bad thing, or in the old Decipher Star Wars... or you could be a bit more honest and recognize that, like in V:TES, drawing cards in L5R is crucial to achieve victory. I can't remember much Koteis that have been won by players without Fate cards in hand on their final turns... but you surelly must have seen.

1 minute ago, Gaffa said:

But facts are also useless unless used in context. Trying to link participation in a tournament as an indicator of overall cardgame financial success isn't a causal link you've established to anyone outside of yourself yet.

So, a game that's based in Organized Play events and number of participants is not measured by the number of attendees on said OP events?! #seemslegitagain

4 minutes ago, oDESGOSTO said:

I'm not pointing out that it failed. I'm pointing out that will

But facts... facts are objective.

But at this point, everything is just hypothesis? You may be right but at this point, you cannot really prove it because events have happened yet. We will have to depend in hindsight to confirm or deny. I hope you are wrong though. AEG's L5R already failed the "test of time" annyway? Even Pokemon does better in that regard.

I prefer to base success or failure in how long before a game is canceled (but not due to license stuff like Conquest). I would think that as long as it is profitable, it is a success for those who really matter: the suits. Which kind of profit margins those suits want is a different thing.

1 minute ago, Wintersong said:

But at this point, everything is just hypothesis? You may be right but at this point, you cannot really prove it because events have happened yet. We will have to depend in hindsight to confirm or deny. I hope you are wrong though. AEG's L5R already failed the "test of time" annyway? Even Pokemon does better in that regard.

I prefer to base success or failure in how long before a game is canceled (but not due to license stuff like Conquest). I would think that as long as it is profitable, it is a success for those who really matter: the suits. Which kind of profit margins those suits want is a different thing.

Hey, by all means, I don't want this game to fail.
Alas, I've been waiting impaciently since the announcement AEG->FFG for this game! But.. this was not the game I was looking for... I was looking for a L5R game, not AGOT Lite in Rokugan ...

25 minutes ago, oDESGOSTO said:

I can't remember much Koteis that have been won by players without Fate cards in hand on their final turns... but you surelly must have seen.

To be fair wouldn't having cards in your hand at the end of the game imply that they were dead cards you couldn't get any use out of during the final battle?