It was definitely Lotus edition where the tournament scene took a nosedive in Toronto. The period where Khol Walls and Ratling were dominant turned a lot of people off, I think. People switched to Vs. and things like that. There was a perception that the game wasn't 'fair', and that unless you has something super busted you might as well not play. It also didn't help that it was a high point for complexity, and it was very tough to keep track of all the weird stronghold specific mechanics.

I blame ToE for most of how lotus turned out. It was definitely an arc where power levels were up to 11, but ToE cards were the worst part of it.

Lotus went up to 11. ToE took it to 13.

On 4/28/2017 at 3:42 PM, Tetsuro said:

For the game overall, the lowest point was probably the time after Jade, when we all assumed the game was dead and gone after WoTC ditched it, and we existed in limbo until AEG surprised everyone by buying it back.

What caused Wizards to ditch it? Was it the Rolling Thunder release, or was that under AEG? I can't remember.

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

What caused Wizards to ditch it? Was it the Rolling Thunder release, or was that under AEG? I can't remember.

Probably it made too little money compared to their other properties. The failed Rolling Thunder release system probably didn't help, but they released several other sets after returning to the traditional CCG release system with Hidden Emperor: A Dark Journey Home.

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

What caused Wizards to ditch it? Was it the Rolling Thunder release, or was that under AEG? I can't remember.

Rolling Thunder was under WotC.

As far as I can remember, WotC dropped it because it was performing poorly.

Low Point would be the entirety of the Wizards of the Coast years.

1 hour ago, tenchi2a said:

Low Point would be the entirety of the Wizards of the Coast years.

I'm sure you don't take much comfort in knowing that FFG's own lead man on L5R is Steve Horvath, who was WotC' s L5R Brand Manager when they had it.

3 hours ago, Tetsuro said:

Rolling Thunder was under WotC.

As far as I can remember, WotC dropped it because it was performing poorly.

No, Rolling Thunder was definitely in the original AEG days. It was Ryan Dancey's last major malfunction at AEG before he began his long career of failing up the ladder in the game industry.

Indeed, the Rolling Thunder marketing disaster nearly destroyed AEG, to say nothing of L5R. If it wasn't for Rolling Thunder, AEG wouldn't have needed to sell L5R to Wizards in the first place.

16 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Indeed, the Rolling Thunder marketing disaster nearly destroyed AEG, to say nothing of L5R. If it wasn't for Rolling Thunder, AEG wouldn't have needed to sell L5R to Wizards in the first place.

IIRC, the Scorpion Clan Coup (the first RT release) was already under WotC.

57 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

IIRC, the Scorpion Clan Coup (the first RT release) was already under WotC.

Correct. Rolling Thunder Started with SCC and ran through Hidden Emperor. This was all under WotC.

Not sure the origin of the idea, but the implementation was 100% during the WotC era.

33 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

IIRC, the Scorpion Clan Coup (the first RT release) was already under WotC.

Wizards bought FRPG in 1997 following GenCon and the first Scroll for Clan Coup came out in December of that year. Most of the development for the release was done prior to the sale and if memory serves the first releases that featured the WotC logo were the Jade Edition starters that came out in May 1998.

IIRC, as it was explained at the time (of the sale), Hasbro, owning Wizards, was having monies trouble, so (as big companies do in those times), ordered its subsidiaries to make cuts and sell off properties to get some cash flow coming in. Wizards (which unlike other parts of Hasbro, was doing quite well) was ordered to chip in.

L5R may or may not have been in trouble itself (we were never told it was). It didn't matter. Wizards had to make cuts, and it had essentially three relatively big names to chose from at the time (plus a handful of minor side projects). At that point, it almost didn't matter how well (or not) L5R was doing - because the other two big names were Pokémon and MTG.

For obvious reasons (of the "two licenses to print money" variety), Wizards chose to put L5R up for sale.

1 hour ago, Himoto said:

IIRC, as it was explained at the time (of the sale), Hasbro, owning Wizards, was having monies trouble, so (as big companies do in those times), ordered its subsidiaries to make cuts and sell off properties to get some cash flow coming in. Wizards (which unlike other parts of Hasbro, was doing quite well) was ordered to chip in.

L5R may or may not have been in trouble itself (we were never told it was). It didn't matter. Wizards had to make cuts, and it had essentially three relatively big names to chose from at the time (plus a handful of minor side projects). At that point, it almost didn't matter how well (or not) L5R was doing - because the other two big names were Pokémon and MTG.

For obvious reasons (of the "two licenses to print money" variety), Wizards chose to put L5R up for sale.

There was a little more to it than that. Wizards bought the L5R IP from FRPG who were the company that AEG had spun off to manage the card game. However after they spun it off AEG signed a licensing agreement with FRPG to produce an RPG and other games in the L5R setting. When Wizards bought FRPG one of the main reasons was believed to be so that they could use the setting to relaunch the Oriental Adventures series of D&D books, which they did, however due to the licensing agreement with AEG they also still had a right to make an L5R RPG which is why we saw only the one core book from wizards and than everything else for the setting was published by AEG and we got the the split D20/D10 releases. Added to that while Wizards owned the game FRPG and AEG were still doing the majority of development for them which meant that rather than using in house talent they were outsourcing large elements of the game and paying fees for it, When the order came to sell off assets for Hasbro it made the most sense from a corporate line to get rid of the L5R brand since they hadn't been able to leverage it to the levels that they had the other game lines they produced, and it was by far the smallest of the game systems in terms of fan base and revenue generation that they had at that point.

6 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Wizards bought FRPG in 1997 following GenCon and the first Scroll for Clan Coup came out in December of that year. Most of the development for the release was done prior to the sale and if memory serves the first releases that featured the WotC logo were the Jade Edition starters that came out in May 1998.

Ah, well, thank you for honing my memory!

Honestly, the lowest point of the game is what was coming in Onyx edition. As bad as any given period was before that (the time under WotC was notoriously badly balanced and had tons of weird, random ideas injected into the setting... some of which were later used to positive effect, others.. not so much), it didn't represent a total burning down of the game as the launch of Onyx edition represented.

Having the bad guys win, having the supposed courageous and honorable samurai flee the nation rather than stand and fight, utterly destroying one of the great clans, reducing the number of clans down to 4... giving Naga and other creatures so much dominance in the setting... It is like the people at the tail-end were determined to utterly destroy the game. Perhaps they had already planned on selling it and were determined to trash the story of the game to the point that it just simply could not have been followed up on. (I mean, the new status quo might have been fun for an RPG... but for a CCG setting? It was done.)

49 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Honestly, the lowest point of the game is what was coming in Onyx edition. As bad as any given period was before that (the time under WotC was notoriously badly balanced and had tons of weird, random ideas injected into the setting... some of which were later used to positive effect, others.. not so much), it didn't represent a total burning down of the game as the launch of Onyx edition represented.

Having the bad guys win, having the supposed courageous and honorable samurai flee the nation rather than stand and fight, utterly destroying one of the great clans, reducing the number of clans down to 4... giving Naga and other creatures so much dominance in the setting... It is like the people at the tail-end were determined to utterly destroy the game. Perhaps they had already planned on selling it and were determined to trash the story of the game to the point that it just simply could not have been followed up on. (I mean, the new status quo might have been fun for an RPG... but for a CCG setting? It was done.)

Wasn't it just preparation for total change/reset into ECG (LCG) format? Including Clan reduction into base four as they did in DT:R? Wasn't just whole sell procedure started with talk about advices how transform CCG into ECG?

And to be precise, CCG Onyx had standard 9 factions, Naga was present but imho wasn't OP.

Reducing factions to 4 was only remotely seriously discussed in the brief period between when the DT thought we were making the LCG and when we learned it was actually being sold off.

As stated, Onyx was designed with 9 factions intact, with the Naga replacing the absent Mantis.

I wonder if having 4 factions meant having 4 multi-clan Strongholds, but the individual personalities still having their traditional colors. I mean, let's say you had an Alliance Phoenix/Crane stronghold allowing you to play your orangey Phoenix and Powder Blue Crane guys as one faction. That I feel it could work for a couple of arcs, as long as it was clear it was an "emergency" situation there would be an eventual endgame to the story where the clans would recover their independence. It could have worked if managed with care. I mean, with a rotation system similar to FFG's, at some point there would have a base of individual clan cards big enought to offer a multitude of deckbuilding options for single clans... or maybe shifting alliances.

7 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

I wonder if having 4 factions meant having 4 multi-clan Strongholds, but the individual personalities still having their traditional colors. I mean, let's say you had an Alliance Phoenix/Crane stronghold allowing you to play your orangey Phoenix and Powder Blue Crane guys as one faction. That I feel it could work for a couple of arcs, as long as it was clear it was an "emergency" situation there would be an eventual endgame to the story where the clans would recover their independence. It could have worked if managed with care. I mean, with a rotation system similar to FFG's, at some point there would have a base of individual clan cards big enought to offer a multitude of deckbuilding options for single clans... or maybe shifting alliances.

That's pretty much exactly what it meant.

For anyone who is as super interested in the Rolling Thunder history as I am:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080705130129/http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/lbs/rollingthunder.html

I see the much maligned Rolling Tunder system as a predecessor in some ways to the current LCG system. The problem with RT is that it was a weird hybrid: it had flat rarity, but it still came in random boosters. As a result, you had to keep buying boosters (true, not as many) to get your playset for cards that had no secondary market value. Basically, there was no positive trade-off. It had additional problems, like multiple, overlapping SKUs of product for each release, and it was badly explained to retailers and distributors, who didn't understand how it was supposed to work, which made them lose a lot of money to it and consequently just hated it. Also, the market was simply different to the current one; it was a market where CCGs that weren't MTG could survive for a long time.

17 hours ago, Tetsuro said:

I'm sure you don't take much comfort in knowing that FFG's own lead man on L5R is Steve Horvath, who was WotC' s L5R Brand Manager when they had it.

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".

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

For anyone who is as super interested in the Rolling Thunder history as I am:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080705130129/http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/lbs/rollingthunder.html

Great read. I think they make some very good points about the effect of different types of rarity on sales.

My biggest gripe with the LCG model is that it intends to profit by maximizing players and minimizing revenue per player. One of my favorite things about CCGs is the ability to "pimp" my deck out with foils, promotional cards, signed cards, super-old printings, and so forth.

I think the chief lesson to be learned is this:

"players sometimes SAY they want one thing, but when they vote with their dollars, they go a different direction."

19 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

Great read. I think they make some very good points about the effect of different types of rarity on sales.

My biggest gripe with the LCG model is that it intends to profit by maximizing players and minimizing revenue per player. One of my favorite things about CCGs is the ability to "pimp" my deck out with foils, promotional cards, signed cards, super-old printings, and so forth.

I think the chief lesson to be learned is this:

"players sometimes SAY they want one thing, but when they vote with their dollars, they go a different direction."

Oh! Youd don't need to worry about pimping your deck. There may not be foils (I hope!) in this encarnation of the game, but sure there will be all kind of alternate art, full bleed cards, some of them very hard to get (like the ones given at Worlds or Gencon).