38 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

My biggest gripe with the LCG model is that it intends to profit by maximizing players and minimizing revenue per player.

You're complaining that FFG's marketing plan is to maximize the number of players???

52 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Did we need mortals to kill the sun and moon and replace them for all of... 0 difference it made?

This was a pretty cool story concept in my opinion.

7 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

You're complaining that FFG's marketing plan is to maximize the number of players???

Well, bandwagoning is a real danger.

3 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This was a pretty cool story concept in my opinion.

And would have been cooler if it wasn't immediately overturned.

Yakamo as Sun and Hitomi as Moon for the rest of the game, and exploring how that changed things would have been cool.

Them getting replaced again by dragons was an anticlimax.

7 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

1 hour ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Did we need mortals to kill the sun and moon and replace them for all of... 0 difference it made?

This was a pretty cool story concept in my opinion.

I always hated this story concept. Mortals ascending to become the sun and moon and therefore above the kami just never sat well with me

33 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

You're complaining that FFG's marketing plan is to maximize the number of players???

I'm not complaining. I'll play the game either way. But as someone who enjoys spending a fair amount of my hard-earned money cracking packs and buying swag, it's not my best outcome. There has to be some way to grow your base at the same time you grow their average spending.

2 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

I'm not complaining. I'll play the game either way. But as someone who enjoys spending a fair amount of my hard-earned money cracking packs and buying swag, it's not my best outcome. There has to be some way to grow your base at the same time you grow their average spending.

You can always buy 3rd party swag. If the game performs well (and we all hope it will) we will see tonz of them

15 minutes ago, C3gorach said:

You can always buy 3rd party swag. If the game performs well (and we all hope it will) we will see tonz of them

BUT MUH FOILZ

God, I hate foils. The full-foil Lotus starters were obnoxious.
Clearly full-bleeds are where it's at!

33 minutes ago, Nagori-A-Go-Go said:

God, I hate foils. The full-foil Lotus starters were obnoxious.
Clearly full-bleeds are where it's at!

Gold Edition foils were the best. You could blind your opponent if you caught the light just right!

2 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Just because someone handled something badly 15 years ago... hell, 15 MONTHS ago for that matter, doesn't mean they will do a bad job now.

People learn more from mistakes than successes. I am sure we have all had whatever project that after finishing it and sending it out there in the world, we later realized something and want to a do-over. How many games in the video game market where you have 10-50x as many people working on it get turned out in a broken state, but given them 6 more months and it can be a great play experience?

Did we need mortals to kill the sun and moon and replace them for all of... 0 difference it made?

Did we need a 10th Kami to pop up out of the blue, accomplish basically nothing of note and then disappear just as quickly leaving no real impact?

Did the Shadow HAVE to be defeated by giving it the kami Akodo? Was that even a sensible way to defeat it? And how is it the ninja serving the Shadow somehow got turned into 'Akodo' that were indistinguishable from the old ones? That's just... weird. What does that even mean about free will and how is it others who carry the name of an ancestor do not behave similarly constrained?

What good really arose from the whole Spirit Wars? What meaningful impact does it have to make the worst Hantei return if it isn't going to go anywhere?

Why was there a stronghold that inverts the entire concept of military and requires you to beat it via chi when the whole game isn't designed for that?

And how did anyone think a stronghold with 5 province slots in a game where there was free gold and free personalities and powerful events was going to well.. be remotely balanced?

So many highly questionable decisions that were made to the game in both story and design right out the gate. Nothing that has been released in the previews so far looks bad or wonky though. 15 years is a quarter of a lifetime-- humans can undergo quite a lot of growth in such time. As long as he doesn't claim that no mistakes at all were made, I think the same person should absolutely be given another chance.

Those behind the last few editions of the CCG though? Particularly given how I heard they handled the last Winter Court?...

I would be quite a bit more hesitant trusting them with the direction of the game as I just don't sense they have quite figured out that they were screwing up the whole thing... I get more of the sense that they believe they were doing everything perfectly and just had the rug pulled out from under them by the company "before they had the chance".

I'd argue with many of those. Hitomi and Yakamo were big deals at the time, even into Gold. The Shadow being defeated by giving it the name Akodo was a natural resolution : the whole point of the Nothing was that it didn't have an identity, and therefore could take on the traits of anything (hence the shapeshifting and impersonation sheananigans). What Hitomi gave them wasn't just an empty shell of a name : it was an identity, the name Akodo and everything that name meant . They didn't just become Akodo-named people ; they literally became the Akodo. Though it did help that (as Spirit Wars showed), a number of older Akodo and their children returned to the clan to guide them.

What meaningful impact did the return of the worst Hantei have? Well, there was the way it impacted the personal history of a lot of Gold-era characters - Naseru ; Taeruko, Nakamuro, Aikune and Shaitung ; there was the long-term effect of the destruction of Beiden pass, all of which had lasting story effects well into Gold.

Long-term impact beyond Gold (even in Gold, but beyond) is largely on AEG , since they had the game firmly in hand by that point. And you could ask the same question of just about everything AEG did - lasting story impact of big storyline points was never their strong suite, because they were always desperate to move on to the Next Big Thing.

17 minutes ago, Himoto said:

Long-term impact beyond Gold (even in Gold, but beyond) is largely on AEG , since they had the game firmly in hand by that point. And you could ask the same question of just about everything AEG did - lasting story impact of big storyline points was never their strong suite, because they were always desperate to move on to the Next Big Thing.

Which I think was their biggest problem. They didn't have any real denouement arcs and everything had to be high tension at all times.

My biggest problem with Onyx before the sale was that it was coming to soon rather than it was coming.

3 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Just because someone handled something badly 15 years ago... hell, 15 MONTHS ago for that matter, doesn't mean they will do a bad job now.

I would even argue that someone who handled a game badly before would know better how to make the game good than someone with no experience making the game whatsoever. The person who made mistakes in the past will now have the valuable knowledge of what DOESN'T work in the game, and (if they know what they're doing) will avoid making those same mistakes in the future. Now I unfortunately wasn't around for the original L5R (I always wanted to play it, but they didn't sell it near me), so I don't know how good or bad the Wizards years actually were. But from everything I've seen about the new game thus far, I'm optimistic.

I think the big take away here is that mistakes can be taken as learning opportunities, in game development and in life.
Looking at it now, I'm surprised that L5R managed to survive with the numbers given in my previous link, especially when you consider everything else released under the system didn't.

6 hours ago, Tetsuro said:

Gold Edition foils were the best. You could blind your opponent if you caught the light just right!

Khan's Defiance, IMO. Those things are incredibly resilient and pretty too.

Ivory. After the high power but at least multiple viable Clans that was Emperor the characters were suddenly... drastically de-powered and the game was much, much slower. That and the story similarly slowed down and the stuff with the spider heir being trained seemed more than a little silly so far as obviously signalling future story beats.