11 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

A samurai is bound to by duty to the will of his superiors.

Some random tournament winner is not my superior. I hate the idea of some obsessed neckbeard getting a say over how and what I can play, and I shouldn't be forced into his wannabe LARP power fantasy to play the game.

I find a lot of the support for this idea contradictory. Roles cannot both shake up the meta when they change and be trivial enough to ignore. Giving top tournament winners the ability to dictate deckbuilding decisions to every other player in the game is precisely pandering to competitive players by handing them an ego stroke.

For my part I think the roles provide a large enough benefit that they'll be impossible to ignore. It will shake up the meta when it changes, but in the mean time it's going to constrict things even more. Role selection will almost certainly be "best fit" choices that punish creative deckbuilding.

14 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

I don't like the system, because it makes it possible for trolls to gimp their clans. And the design team can't even balance against it, because it easily could lead to an unbalanced metagame the next year.

What is the difference between someone gimping their clan and the last clan to pick not getting their 1st or 2nd choice? Maybe not even their 3rd?

I think that if the Devs know that if a Clan doesn't get "The Best" role, they will still be alright. If that is the case, a "troll" can't do too much damage.

9 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

Oh no! Like if the Crab clan chose keeper of air and then got fate anytime they won defense against an air conflict? Oh and then could include more ally cards?

And I bet the design team never considered designing more province cards with other elements to keep things balanced.

Woe is us for these unpredictable and unforeseeable outcomes!

*this was all sarcasm if you didn't notice*

Oh gawd the sarcasm is rich in this post lolol

Truth is - as I said before - the effect of these is both very small in that no role card is really THAT great, and also very great in that the Hatamoto is likely going to be a loyalist player since the Hatamoto role hinges on being a loyalist... so its going to be difficult for a player to jump clans to steal the title, choose a bad role and then what? Be forced to ONLY play that clan all season until the next Hatamoto is chosen? right?

18 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

I don't like the system, because it makes it possible for trolls to gimp their clans. And the design team can't even balance against it, because it easily could lead to an unbalanced metagame the next year.

As I eluded to earlier, if someone were to pull this off how could you do anything but applaud them?

To "gimp" a clan you have to first become a hatamoto and then win a tournament in which the roles are decided for that clan, ie world championship. Meaning you also likely have that clan win some other cool story prize(s) along they way.

Then you would have to again climb the ranks of another clan and win the world championships again. That's a lot of effort to get a specific roll.....but if it's that important them by all means go after it and become a legend in this game. The last thing people would call you for pulling that off would be a troll.

@Ignithas Nothing easy about it and your concerns are out of proportion with reality.

6 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

What is the difference between someone gimping their clan and the last clan to pick not getting their 1st or 2nd choice? Maybe not even their 3rd?

I think that if the Devs know it will be alright if a Clan doesn't get "The Best" role, they will still be alright. If that is the case, a "troll" can't do too much damage.

That there are still 3 roles that could be worse. But this scenario seems also very suboptimal for a balanced and competitive environment.

5 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

That there are still 3 roles that could be worse. But this scenario seems also very suboptimal for a balanced and competitive environment.

I suppose you're right. With all of our play testing compared to FFG's play testing the role cards are totally unbalanced and trash. Watching the live stream today I can see that the amount of love, effort, and passion they have the the game has blinded them.

There is only one solution. Sour grapes for all the competitors at tournaments. You are stuck with role cards you apparently don't have to actually use at tournaments. Be mad. Don't buy the game or play casual. Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to eat our Cheerios that everyone is trying to poop in.

11 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

I suppose you're right. With all of our play testing compared to FFG's play testing the role cards are totally unbalanced and trash. Watching the live stream today I can see that the amount of love, effort, and passion they have the the game has blinded them.

You don't actually have much experience with FFG's track record on design balance, do you?

23 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

That there are still 3 roles that could be worse. But this scenario seems also very suboptimal for a balanced and competitive environment.

Everyone is entitled to have an opinion......but if you have a legitimate concern, it would help your cause to offer up a solution or at least support your concern with relevant facts.

Here is how this will all shake out:

Clan's will take a look at which combinations of provinces that have an elemental overlap will give them access to play province combination they otherwise couldn't.

Then they will take a look at what other clan would likely close if they could pick province combinations they normally couldn't.

I'll use Phoenix and Seeker of the Void as it's one that jumps out as being pretty obvious. If you are not Phoenix your decision process is simple:

Has Phoenix already taken it?

Is there an Element that would help my clan in having two of the same province element more than what Phoenix gains with Void?

If the answer to the first question is yes, then you easily pick seeker of the element that gives you the option to play multiple provinces that suits your clan.

if neither of these options are available to you.....the worst case scenario is you get an extra 3 influence to play with, which is a pretty FRACKEN AMAZING consolation prize.

Please tell me why this is a bad thing and how you would fix it.

8 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

As I eluded to earlier, if someone were to pull this off how could you do anything but applaud them?

To "gimp" a clan you have to first become a hatamoto and then win a tournament in which the roles are decided for that clan, ie world championship. Meaning you also likely have that clan win some other cool story prize(s) along they way.

Then you would have to again climb the ranks of another clan and win the world championships again. That's a lot of effort to get a specific roll.....but if it's that important them by all means go after it and become a legend in this game. The last thing people would call you for pulling that off would be a troll.

@Ignithas Nothing easy about it and your concerns are out of proportion with reality.

As far as I know you have to earn a personal invitation at either a Kotei or a Grand Kotei tournament by being a top performer (?!) and then be the best player from your clan at the World Championship. I am not even sure if you need to win anything.

3 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

I suppose you're right. With all of our play testing compared to FFG's play testing the role cards are totally unbalanced and trash. Watching the live stream today I can see that the amount of love, effort, and passion they have the the game has blinded them.

There is only one solution. Sour grapes for all the competitors at tournaments. You are stuck with role cards you apparently don't have to actually use at tournaments. Be mad. Don't buy the game or play casual. Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to eat our Cheerios that everyone is trying to poop in.

I haven't said that the role cards are unbalanced and trash and infact I don't think that. They only vary in powerlevel within one clan. I also don't think that passion has blinded them, I just think that they valued community participation and interaction more than a stable balance between the factions. I don't have a problem with that, I can easily switch between factions if a faction is weaker, but I would have prefered for everyone to chose one role for the deck/faction they want to play. Not using a role doesn't make sense in a competitive environment, because you are only disadvantaged. I am not mad and I think they created a wonderful game I am eager to invest my money and time in. I also don't see anyone deficating in your cheerios, I just am concerned about one aspect in the game.

9 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

You don't actually have much experience with FFG's track record on design balance, do you?

How experience and data do you have on this game's design balance? I would love to see it.

9 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

9 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

As far as I know you have to earn a personal invitation at either a Kotei or a Grand Kotei tournament by being a top performer (?!) and then be the best player from your clan at the World Championship. I am not even sure if you need to win anything?!

If you don't want the 6 other clans picking in front of you, and disrupting your evil plot, you would want to win worlds. Still being top of any clan at worlds is no easy feat. And even if you pull this off and stick a clan with the worst of the 4 remaing options.....it's not really going to be as bad as you're making it seem.

4 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Everyone is entitled to have an opinion......but if you have a legitimate concern, it would help your cause to offer up a solution or at least support your concern with relevant facts.

Here is how this will all shake out:

Clan's will take a look at which combinations of provinces that have an elemental overlap will give them access to play province combination they otherwise couldn't.

Then they will take a look at what other clan would likely close if they could pick province combinations they normally couldn't.

I'll use Phoenix and Seeker of the Void as it's one that jumps out as being pretty obvious. If you are not Phoenix your decision process is simple:

Has Phoenix already taken it?

Is there an Element that would help my clan in having two of the same province element more than what Phoenix gains with Void?

If the answer to the first question is yes, then you easily pick seeker of the element that gives you the option to play multiple provinces that suits your clan.

if neither of these options are available to you.....the worst case scenario is you get an extra 3 influence to play with, which is a pretty FRACKEN AMAZING consolation prize.

Please tell me why this is a bad thing and how you would fix it.

I personally would let everyone chose their role cards and let the best of the clans decide on story decisions and it would also be awesome if they could decide the direction of future sets for their clan (for example they could decide that one future cycle is all about Shiba for Phoenix).

2 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

How experience and data do you have on this game's design balance? I would love to see it.

I have experience and data on every other CCG/LCG FFG has ever made.

But that's cool - you're right. I'm sure that their entire history is irrelevant, and this will be the game where they've finally figured it all out.

Just now, Buhallin said:

I have experience and data on every other CCG/LCG FFG has ever made.

But that's cool - you're right. I'm sure that their entire history is irrelevant, and this will be the game where they've finally figured it all out.

It might be the one. It might not. It may be because of the role cards, it might be how they designed a clan.

We don't know. I have yet to even see a thread picking the top and bottom roles for each clan, much less how those clans/roles interact with other clans/roles.

But yeah. You're right.

2 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

I personally would let everyone chose their role cards and let the best of the clans decide on story decisions and it would also be awesome if they could decide the direction of future sets for their clan (for example they could decide that one future cycle is all about Shiba for Phoenix).

So repeat what AEG did? I'm not sure if you were around for the CCG or not. If you weren't, then this is essentially what happened and it eventually helped kill the game. If you were, you should know better.

3 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

If you don't want the 6 other clans picking in front of you, and disrupting your evil plot, you would want to win worlds. Still being top of any clan at worlds is no easy feat. And even if you pull this off and stick a clan with the worst of the 4 remaing options.....it's not really going to be as bad as you're making it seem.

This is completely irrelevant if you want to troll. While I don't think that a role card can make a faction from tier 1 to trash, I actually do think that the power difference from one role card to another for a clan (especially phoenix) is significant and can easily lead from one clan being competitivly viable to being a suboptimal choice at tournaments.

21 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

As far as I know you have to earn a personal invitation at either a Kotei or a Grand Kotei tournament by being a top performer (?!) and then be the best player from your clan at the World Championship. I am not even sure if you need to win anything.

Only the top in clans get to choose - if you want to choose early (to either pick optimally or troll) you would need to be champion or very close to it... You need to win a lot. If you don't win a lot you either risk having the choice of roles reduced preventing you from the optimal or troll picks, or another player simply placing higher in your clan stopping you all together. You'll have to be a world class player to become Hatamoto and make this choice for the clans for better or worse.

I really wonder why people are afraid that a Hatamoto will pick badly considering these players likely have a deeper understanding of the game, hense their placement, and thus pick better for the meta weather through optimal clan match or meta hate-draft style. I would only be concerned this first time as no one has much experience in the game, so the Hatamoto of every clan may not be dedicated or experienced, but simply place well because it is a new game... But we'll see.

11 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

I personally would let everyone chose their role cards and let the best of the clans decide on story decisions and it would also be awesome if they could decide the direction of future sets for their clan (for example they could decide that one future cycle is all about Shiba for Phoenix).

You certainly can do this in casual games - but for sanctioned events you'll need to go with the role the clan gets. The exclusionary nature of the roles (each role can only be chosen by 1 clan) is important to ensure diversity and a meta choice between optimal match for clan and hate-draft.

8 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

So repeat what AEG did? I'm not sure if you were around for the CCG or not. If you weren't, then this is essentially what happened and it eventually helped kill the game. If you were, you should know better.

I don't want FFG repeat what AEG did. The thing that killed Legend of the five Rings wasn't that they let players decide about story decisions. Missing balance, stupid story decisions from the higher ups, missing clan identity, a very harsh environment for CCG and the difficulty to introduce new players did.

6 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

While I don't think that a role card can make a faction from tier 1 to trash, I actually do think that the power difference from one role card to another for a clan (especially phoenix) is significant and can easily lead from one clan being competitivly viable to being a suboptimal choice at tournaments.

I agree with this to some extent, but, insinuating that it will be easy to troll a clan to mess with their competitive viabilty is out of line.

3 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I agree with this to some extent, but, insinuating that it will be easy to troll a clan to mess with their competitive viabilty is out of line.

Not by playing in the clan, claiming the title of Hatamoto just to pick a "bad role" no, but I do think the 1-3rd place clans will face a very real decision between a self-boosting optimal pick vs a meta hate-draft pick... but this is good and working as intended.

Do Phoenix pick void just to use the 2nd void province? Or do they pick Earth to block Crab from using 2 of those...

Can we all take a step back here. I mean we should probably realize that this meta that is supposedly being upset by the role cards, literally has not formed yet. No one outside of FFG has played a game with all of the cards of available to them.

So maybe lets see how things play out in the real world before we condemn or praise that one clan has access to a card that another does not.

1 hour ago, Buhallin said:

Some random tournament winner is not my superior.

With the Hatamoto system, though, he kind of is ...

1 minute ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I agree with this to some extent, but, insinuating that it will be easy to troll a clan to mess with their competitive viabilty is out of line.

I don't think that it is out of line, especially within the L5R communnity. We speak about a community where members of a clan decided to not play against each other in a tournament and decide games with coins.

2 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

With the Hatamoto system, though, he kind of is ...

No, he's not. Even if you want to define superior as simply "better player", the winners are nothing but the players who could get to the event and had a good day. The cost inherent in travelling to such limited events is the first filter, not quality - the best player who clears that filter is the best of the leftovers. This idea that these events somehow picks based on skill as the first differentiator is fictional. Comfortable fiction, sure, but still fiction.

But in terms of "someone who can order me around", which is how you used it - no. Just... no. No single player (or 7) should be in the position of dictating what everyone else in the game is allowed to play and use.

Didn't I see somewhere that Grand Kotei Winners got travel and accommodations to Worlds paid for?

And I don't think that it is what everyone else is allowed to use. That makes it seem like they are choosing a card to errata. They are just choosing a small bonus for your clan, that they wouldn't otherwise have. It's up to each player how they choose to play within that framework.

edit: I'm also pretty comfortable with the idea that the winner of Worlds is better than me.