I just want all this to happen faster. I am ok with the way they are implementing it. But it should have a maximum of two years before rotation and no more. I had left Netrunner because of being stale long ago, and just leaving thrones for the same reason.

That seems a bit too fast for FFG to keep up with, to be blunt.

1 hour ago, Bronze said:

I just want all this to happen faster. I am ok with the way they are implementing it. But it should have a maximum of two years before rotation and no more. I had left Netrunner because of being stale long ago, and just leaving thrones for the same reason.

I'm wary of the longer rotation too. A shorter rotation may mean people who have bought ALL the cards have less usable cards, but it also means the game changes shape more, and its easier for new player to join in. I think both of those are important. Hopefully the role cards add some variance at least. They basically let legality switch each year, but they don't help new players get into a game that's 4 years old.

1 hour ago, qwertyuiop said:

Yep. That's almost exactly what I said. Core set scarcity is not uncommon upon release and single core format is engaging for about as long as it takes to get a second or third core set.

Single core can be fun, but its definitely temporary. Once people can get 3 cores there is no reason to go back to just 1 lol.

9 hours ago, Yogo Gohei said:

4 years is, clearly, plenty long for you to have gotten your money out of a product.

That said, did they ever advertise the Core as "evergreen"? If so, this announcement means they just straight up lied. While the end results of the lie don't bother me, I am bothered that the company went back on their word.

If they never actually said that the Core was "evergreen", then there is no problem.

I'd rather have my doctor tell me: "Sorry, I was mistaken; I thought that treatment would do the job, but actually this new one is better to you" than "Well, I won't change the treatment I originally prescribed; I gotta stick to my gums, you know". For some reason, I'd prefer the first one.

I'd prefer L5R not to be in the "this is the bestest designing ever, oops! it died on us" stage for a long, long time; thank you very much.

1 hour ago, Mon no Oni said:

I'd rather have my doctor tell me: "Sorry, I was mistaken; I thought that treatment would do the job, but actually this new one is better to you" than "Well, I won't change the treatment I originally prescribed; I gotta stick to my gums, you know". For some reason, I'd prefer the first one.

I'd prefer L5R not to be in the "this is the bestest designing ever, oops! it died on us" stage for a long, long time; thank you very much.

I agree. But I would rather they not pretend they are flawless in the first place.

"We may make a mistake when creating the very first set for this brand new game" isn't too far fetched of an assumption to make.

Again, my issue isn't with the result. Just the execution.

Frankly there are no stand-out busted cards in L5R at the moment. Not anything like San-San, Astroscript, Account Siphon, etc.

Maybe a few factions could use some catchup cards but this core set is the most solid out of any of FFG's.

2 hours ago, shosuko said:

I'm wary of the longer rotation too.

A shorter rotation, like 2 1/2 to 4 years: longer than a ccg but shorter than previous lcg games. Netrunner is at 5 years, and just now started to drop cards? Sounds like a grind. but Clan roles can help keep it fresh, too. I am hoping they've learned from previous stagnation and adhere to a tighter arc.

I would prefer 2 - 2.5 year rotation. Have an overriding story arc, conclude it, then re-release the core with new champs and new focuses/mechanics for clans based on story.

It's not that a short rotation is a bad idea; it's that FFG is a small company working on many product lines,

4 hours ago, Mon no Oni said:

I'd rather have my doctor tell me: "Sorry, I was mistaken; I thought that treatment would do the job, but actually this new one is better to you" than "Well, I won't change the treatment I originally prescribed; I gotta stick to my gums, you know". For some reason, I'd prefer the first one.

I'd prefer L5R not to be in the "this is the bestest designing ever, oops! it died on us" stage for a long, long time; thank you very much.

Stick to my gums!

I understand your hesitation. It'd suck for the L5R fans to have to go through all that again.

3 hours ago, player2636234 said:

Frankly there are no stand-out busted cards in L5R at the moment. Not anything like San-San, Astroscript, Account Siphon, etc.

Maybe a few factions could use some catchup cards but this core set is the most solid out of any of FFG's.

A Revised Core doesn't necessarily require busted cards be phased out.

Weak or fairly "blah" cards could also be replaced by more viable or interesting cards that would have cycled out. They could also do this with the Deluxe expansions, keeping the good and removing the not so good.

From what I can comprehend in the long run, those new players with revised Core/Deluxes would not have anything mechanical over long time players with old Cores/Deluxes and the monthly packs.

7 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

A Revised Core doesn't necessarily require busted cards be phased out.

Weak or fairly "blah" cards could also be replaced by more viable or interesting cards that would have cycled out. They could also do this with the Deluxe expansions, keeping the good and removing the not so good.

From what I can comprehend in the long run, those new players with revised Core/Deluxes would not have anything mechanical over long time players with old Cores/Deluxes and the monthly packs.

Well, to keep the game interesting, it's more necessary to remove busted cards than weak ones, because players will remove the latter on their own.

As for your last point, you're right: the revised core set contains only cards that were previously released (either in the original core set or one of the first two cycles).

I'm sure if you ask the designers, they would be all for faster rotation, but I also believe they have little control over the rotation system, as that is handled by a different group. We then get into the idea of "what is profitable" over "What is the best for the health of the game", because they might not be the same thing. A thriving game should be profitable, but a profitable game doesn't need to be thriving and just letting games lapse for a bit, then come back, like what they are doing for ANR, might be more profitable for them, since they can keep hoping people around while a game treads water, then come back and revise it to bring back people (Look at interest from ANR revised core).

Also, I don't think rotation really impacts their casual sales as much as it does their sales to competitive players.

12 hours ago, Manchu said:

It's not that a short rotation is a bad idea; it's that FFG is a small company working on many product lines,

Not only that, but the card pool is much smaller per a given time period when compared to a CCG.

1 minute ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

Not only that, but the card pool is much smaller per a given time period when compared to a CCG.

I care less about the size of the card pool than I care about the length of time that a card is legal in the game.

Additionally, you can't really compare CCG card pools to LCG card pools because of the rarity driven power levels that CCGs have. CCGs frequently print cards that are either strictly worse than other cards in the pool or just extremely underpowered very often just by virtue of rarity and this category of cards can comprise upwards of 50-60% of the cardpool in some examples. This isn't to say that LCGs succeed at making every card tournament viable, but rather to say that the LCG card pool is best compared to the top half of a CCG's card pool that isn't rendered immediately unplayable by rarity power level design. That top half is still mostly unplayable (10-15% of MtG's standard card pool shows up at tournaments), but the cards in it at least could potentially be played, which is more akin to how LCGs work.

2 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Well, to keep the game interesting, it's more necessary to remove busted cards than weak ones, because players will remove the latter on their own.

My point was that printing a Revised Core is still beneficial even if there are no "busted" cards to be removed. If the core contains a card that is widely considered a "coaster" and more interesting card that fills a similar role will soon be phased out due to cycling, printing a Revised Core that phases out the coaster and includes the more interesting card would be beneficial to the game.

45 minutes ago, Khift said:

I care less about the size of the card pool than I care about the length of time that a card is legal in the game.

Additionally, you can't really compare CCG card pools to LCG card pools because of the rarity driven power levels that CCGs have. CCGs frequently print cards that are either strictly worse than other cards in the pool or just extremely underpowered very often just by virtue of rarity and this category of cards can comprise upwards of 50-60% of the cardpool in some examples. This isn't to say that LCGs succeed at making every card tournament viable, but rather to say that the LCG card pool is best compared to the top half of a CCG's card pool that isn't rendered immediately unplayable by rarity power level design. That top half is still mostly unplayable (10-15% of MtG's standard card pool shows up at tournaments), but the cards in it at least could potentially be played, which is more akin to how LCGs work.

I guess I don't really understand why the length of time a card is in the game is that important. Yeah, if a card is OP, it's good for it to cycle out, but that's a minority of cards, usually. I'd rather have a large pool of viable cards so you get more diversity, rather than a bunch of decks that change constantly, but all the decks change to the same thing whenever they change.

11 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I guess I don't really understand why the length of time a card is in the game is that important. Yeah, if a card is OP, it's good for it to cycle out, but that's a minority of cards, usually. I'd rather have a large pool of viable cards so you get more diversity, rather than a bunch of decks that change constantly, but all the decks change to the same thing whenever they change.

I think while you are theoretically correct, practically, people end up playing the same decks with little change unless we see either significant power creep or they start removing cards. If they were to continue printing new and interesting cards, sure, but how often can they practically do that, without them either being broken or garbage?

The point being made here is to institute forced change so the environment doesn't get stale.

It is important because every new card has to take into account all legal cards.

This is pretty premature isn't it? L5R has at least 4 years before any thing happens at all. And so far I really like the cards we have seen.

Netrunner in its case is getting in effect a soft reboot. Which it needed. As a Netrunner player, when I saw which cards from the Core got axed I thought to myself "FINALLY! The non-interactive deck issue is being fixed" because the Anarch cards getting whacked were at the root of that problem. Add in OP cards like Account Siphon getting the ax and I am a happy camper.

A Game of Thrones was a different problem. No rotation scheme could fix it because the accumulated rules weight plus the CCG to LCG conversion had it in a place where a redesign was the only logical option. And having played it they deserve a gold star - 2.0 is far superior to its predecessor.

One thing the ANR Core revision did make me think of is perhaps they should add Core revision to the rotation plan. In other words, after "x" number of cycles complete a new Core set is issued, and cards from the original Core not in the new one are rotated out. Make the new core predictable in other words - not its contents but its coming.

8 minutes ago, Joelist said:

One thing the ANR Core revision did make me think of is perhaps they should add Core revision to the rotation plan. In other words, after "x" number of cycles complete a new Core set is issued, and cards from the original Core not in the new one are rotated out. Make the new core predictable in other words - not its contents but its coming.

And the moment where the first cycles are rotated out, are as good a place any, and better than most!

Also, other poster mentioned L5R has no broken cards yet, unlike Netrunner. I bet at this point in the game-life of Netrunner nobody said "Look, Syphon Account is broken!" If there any broken cards in L5R we just don't know yet. Not even the designers, with the first cycle designed and probably well into the second do.

3 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

And the moment where the first cycles are rotated out, are as good a place any, and better than most!

Also, other poster mentioned L5R has no broken cards yet, unlike Netrunner. I bet at this point in the game-life of Netrunner nobody said "Look, Syphon Account is broken!" If there any broken cards in L5R we just don't know yet. Not even the designers, with the first cycle designed and probably well into the second do.

Actually Account Siphon was fingered as a problem before the first cycle was complete. Noise mill was an issue early on too, and indeed the reason Jackson Howard (in the Spin Cycle) was SO crucial and an auto include was the card provided at least a partial counter to Noise mill (non-interactive deck).

4 minutes ago, Joelist said:

Actually Account Siphon was fingered as a problem before the first cycle was complete. Noise mill was an issue early on too, and indeed the reason Jackson Howard (in the Spin Cycle) was SO crucial and an auto include was the card provided at least a partial counter to Noise mill (non-interactive deck).

Well, badly chosen examples aside, the fact stands that problem cards usually don't become evident until later on, or they wouldn't have been printed in the first place.

25 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

Well, badly chosen examples aside, the fact stands that problem cards usually don't become evident until later on, or they wouldn't have been printed in the first place.

Not to mention, some cards don't become problem cards until other cards are printed.

36 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

Well, badly chosen examples aside, the fact stands that problem cards usually don't become evident until later on, or they wouldn't have been printed in the first place.

This isn't exactly true. What it shows is a different design philosophy, and that the playtesters aren't necessarily tier 1 players of the game. Account Siphon is a great example, because it was intended to be incredibly powerful, and balanced with its 4 influence cost. It was supposed to be essentially a criminal only card that packed a punch. Weyland had scorch, NBN had San-San, HB's biotic labor, etc (Shaper had tinkering at 4 inf, haha). It was part of the design philosophy of netrunner that powerful effects would simply have higher influence costs, that each faction has their own bull they can pull. The problem is it just didn't shake out the way the designers had hoped, as 15 influence was too much to be limiting and the metagame just ended up being very lean.

L5R has shades of this philosophy with the Way cards, and that's probably why they are specifically non-splashable.