7 minutes ago, slowreflex said:

So, I haven't played L5R before and don't know how it worked. When people impacted the story by winning was it the clan that did best that impacted it or the sole winner of the day? i.e. Could an clan-neutral player that happened to win with a Lion deck that day then decide to do something mean to Lions because they just felt like it? Or was it an agreement amongst the clan that ranked highest together?

hahahaha. It was all at the discrepancy of the winner. It was THEIR reward.

10 minutes ago, slowreflex said:

So, I haven't played L5R before and don't know how it worked. When people impacted the story by winning was it the clan that did best that impacted it or the sole winner of the day? i.e. Could an clan-neutral player that happened to win with a Lion deck that day then decide to do something mean to Lions because they just felt like it? Or was it an agreement amongst the clan that ranked highest together?

By and large, story results were determined by a two things - first and second place winners and their clans and the contents of their decks. Player's weren't interviewed for their opinions on story direction or anything like that, although stories around the win could influence the story (if there was a tie, if someone conceded a game, etc). The presence of out-of-clan cards in the winner's deck might illustrate an alliance, shadowlands cards might indicate that someone was corrupted, etc. If a deck was built around a specific personality, it was likely that the story would strongly resolve around their actions. (at least around the time I played, which was Jade-Gold era).

1 minute ago, Sparks Duh said:

hahahaha. It was all at the *discrepancy of the winner. It was THEIR reward.

*Discretion

Sparks nailed it - the winner got to decide. Hence the cool storyline endings... and the not-so-cool ones. At least in the early tourneys. They also looked over the general meta and made some storyline changes; early on, Phoenix were using some Corrupted Silver Mines for fast gold, so they decided that the Phoenix were dabbling in dark magics, hence the fall of (most of) the Elemental Masters during Time of the Void.

It was a mix of both. The tournament winner get's a story prize, they achieve a goal for their clan etc. I'm not aware of it ever happening that a winner did something that was outright damaging for their clan. The rest of the field is still taken into consideration.

Just now, Sparks Duh said:

hahahaha. It was all at the discrepancy of the winner. It was THEIR reward.

That's just not right. Sure the winner got to make a decision but that wasn't everything. The rest of the field had a big influence.

In the race for the throne the first got to be the king but the fate of the other clans was influenced by how well they did overall for example.

8 minutes ago, slowreflex said:

It won't. 3 cards max per deck. They've said you need three core sets to have a full play set, so this means there will be some cards in the Core Set that you only have one of. These are also likely to be desirable cards.

So, I haven't played L5R before and don't know how it worked. When people impacted the story by winning was it the clan that did best that impacted it or the sole winner of the day? i.e. Could an clan-neutral player that happened to win with a Lion deck that day then decide to do something mean to Lions because they just felt like it? Or was it an agreement amongst the clan that ranked highest together?

Shadowlands player playing Unicorn to give the price to the Shadowlands? Check.

Not sure if true but I heard that all the Kolat fiasco in Unicorn because of Unicorn winners suing Kolat cards to win. So there I get my Shinjo family out of the loop even if I never played kolat cards. XD

Right. I think it might work better if the highest ranked clan (based on average performance so number of players didn't matter) that influenced things. Would then be more important for a clan to support all it's members to get their average performance up. And then it would be up to a clan vote or something as to what happened with the story. Which, agreement on might not be realistic though. I just think spreading the accountability for it would keep it under control better.

2 minutes ago, slowreflex said:

Right. I think it might work better if the highest ranked clan (based on average performance so number of players didn't matter) that influenced things. Would then be more important for a clan to support all it's members to get their average performance up. And then it would be up to a clan vote or something as to what happened with the story. Which, agreement on might not be realistic though. I just think spreading the accountability for it would keep it under control better.

They did do some story events like this based on clan participation, but tournament wins were the big story movers.

Many of L5R's top players used to be somewhat mercenary, but even most of them had a playstyle they gravitated towards. Although I suspect there will be quite a bit more faction hopping than there was in the past, there were large swaths of players who would either play only their faction or would play one of the best two or three from the factions they liked.

I don't think that it's too different from how most people play MMOs really. There will always be players who pick the best class at the time and play that. Then there are players who like a role in the game, and play the best choice within that role. Then there are players who enjoy a certain playstyle and will play strictly that unless it is complete garbage. Of course, there's nothing that stops anyone from re-rolling or dabbling in an MMO either, but I think it'll shake out fairly similar in L5R 2.0.

In L5R you had people literally tattooing clan mons on their bodies, coming to tournaments in costume, and sticking to their main clan in hopes of swaying a story vote at a tournament that they couldn't hope to win directly. If FFG can capture even half of the loyal fanaticism the old version inspired in its player base, that'll be half the battle to a homerun game.

Having family mons as avatars would help. Just saying. Avatars mentioned, why do we have Mantis and Spider ones as options? Why no Fox?

The thing I like about LCG model is that when trying to play something else for fun or to teach the game, having default access to the whole card pool, makes it easier.

I'm betting on a lot of the old L5R CCG players sticking with whatever loyalty preference they had before, across the gamut from extremely loyal to mercenary to playing whatever they enjoy most at a given time. Players new to the LCG will likely dabble in a few different things before figuring out their level of loyalty and that's okay. There's no right way to this situation except for whatever works for the individual. In 18 years of continuously playing the old game I never played anything but Unicorn at a constructed event whether they were good or bad. Always had at least one deck from just about every other Clan at any given time too for fun. I remember surprising people at my first Kotei in Gold Edition going undefeated in Swiss rounds because most people thought Unicorn were sub-par. There were also times when better non-loyal players played Unicorn and placed higher than me to claim the Top-of-Clan prizes or even victory at the event. It took me a while to learn that it is what it is and there's no reason to get bent out of shape about it.

The LCG distribution model will make it easier for people to try a bunch of different things and that's a great thing for the game. The only thing that I'll have to come to terms with is not being able to have full decks for every Clan built at any given time unless I buy a lot of Core Sets. That's a good problem to have.

8 hours ago, Kiseki said:

Many of L5R's top players used to be somewhat mercenary

I don't know, watching World Champions like Salman Barakat, Andrew Ornatov, Eugene Earnshaw-Whyte and Scott Rixson win with "their" clans and very good players do well while sticking to their clans was pretty normal. Some people would play other clans, obviously, but every season there was some clan loyalist getting the one or two good finishes with their clans. Or nearly closing the deal with a faction thought unplayable (Sparks).

Often the difference between a good clan and an "unplayable " one had as much to do with dedicated marquee players as the general card pool- not always, but often enough it was noteworthy.

There were a lot of different ways story prizes worked, but generally the most important thing was the clan identity of the tourney winner. It often mattered if they had corrupted cards in their deck. Later in the history, tourney winners were offered choices, but earlier on often they didn't get any substantial say in how their prize would be interpreted (famously, the Crab won the Sword of the Hantei by having it shoved through their clan Champion). In some of the big tournaments, there were smaller effects tied to top of clan players, or the top 2. The story team would often work in details to the outcomes that related to aspects of the winning decks, or even incidents that happened in the tournament games.