Title pretty much says it all. I felt that I needed to post this thread because of, I guess my love for the game, my fondness if the Rokugan setting and other stuff. Mostly, I guess.

We are a total of 5 players, all of us having made and played with 2 decks if not more. For instance, I’m running Dragon mostly (my competitive deck) with my Phoenix deck being my “fun” deck to play when we mix things up. Our gaming group’s composition is similar, with each commonly running a primary deck and a back up... All Clans were represented with our decks, with each Clan running 2 or 3 different splashes every once in a while to try things out.

Over the past gaming days we have played a good deal of 1 vs 1 matches, and 6 games in which we tried our version of 4-Player games. (I posted thoughts on that in my other thread) Now, as we were set to game L5R tonight, all of my buddies have decided to move on from this card game due to the imbalances among the Clans; specifically Scorpion being too strong and too easily used by a player, and Crab being downright too punishing for opponents. I do agree with them on various points, and I can understand where they are coming from. (ever since our last multiplayer when Scorpion was ruthlessly attacked and removed due to their perceived threat, things became unsettling in some ways...)

I don’t know. We gave it a fair shake I think and it was fun as it lasted. As games fall out of favor due to several factors, it’s time to move on, methinks. ?

I don’t have more to say. Thought it might be of some worth to post in these forums.

Related to the topic, I am surprised of seeing several people selling their whole collections (typically 3 cores + full Imperial cycle) last weeks.

I do not remember it happening in other LCGs (maybe with L5R LCG is different due to the hight hype of its release) but I would like to know what othe players think about it and if it is something the Community (and maybe FFG too) should be worried about.

Regards,

While I don't disagree entirely with the balance concerns that you and your group have, I still wonder why this would prompt the group to stop playing if they like the game in general.

I have a small group of 5 close friends who also play and we are all going through various degrees of growing pains getting aclimated to the competitive environment. All of us have come to the realization that we are unlikely to attend and major events and that store championships are not important enough for any of us to get ultra competitive about the game.

We all play games in Jigoku and follow the various l5r forums to stay updated on the metagame. We each keep a competitive deck on hand in case we feel like getting real life reps in. Most commonly we just play casually with a wide array of house rules for deck construction.

If your group is not actively pursuing the game in a competitive fashion then why should any imbalances impact how much you enjoy the game? If the group is going to be competitive then they have to accept that there will be imbalances amongst the clans at various points of the game.

Off topic:

Is Scorpion ahead of the curve? Absolutely. Are they unbeatable? Absolutely not. In some ways it's good to have a clear top deck in the format. As long as there are decks that can combat it then there really isn't an issue. That's how we get parity within the metagame. At any major tournament there will likely be a large number of Scorpion decks. So you just join the masses with stingers on their asses? Do you meta against the Scorpion? Do you try to innovate and build something that falls outside the known metagame?

These are things are all things you will have to be willing to consider to remain competitive because a few months from now it could very well be Unicorn in place of Scorpion........ok that might be a stretch but you get the point.

On topic:

I hope you and your group don't stop playing the game if you really enjoy it. While the competitive metagame does have a big impact on how healthy and enjoyable the game is, it you play casually you can make the game anything you want it to be.

18 minutes ago, Aingeru said:

Related to the topic, I am surprised of seeing several people selling their whole collections (typically 3 cores + full Imperial cycle) last weeks.

I do not remember it happening in other LCGs (maybe with L5R LCG is different due to the hight hype of its release) but I would like to know what othe players think about it and if it is something the Community (and maybe FFG too) should be worried about.

Regards,

I'm not entirely shocked or concerned. In old5r you basically had a bunch of players that were fiercely loyal to the game and their clan. You generally weren't going to get someone to just cross over to l5r if they were already deep I to something else.

With the reboot you get a group of players that have experience with established lcgs looking to make a jump to a new game that is somewhat familiar to them because they played Conquest, Netrunner, GoT, Star Wars LCG, etc. Some enter L5R at a higher level of play because of these past experiences and are immediately competitive. They don't necessarily have the same loyalty to the IP or a clan. They just want to compete and this give them the most access to do that since it grabs up a large number of players.

You also have the players that used to play l5r for 20 years and are getting into a game that is completely new to them. It can be a hard to come to terms with not being instantly good at a game you played for so long.

I think these are two examples of players that may have had certain expectations and might not have gotten what they wanted so they are pulling the plug. It could be for other reasons but these two make the most sense to me.

Whatever the reason I would hope people reconsider and stick with the game. As someone who played the old game for 20 years I find the new version to be vastly superior and more enjoyable. Its not without its flaws but no game can be perfect

Well, my feel is that it's not a balance issue, but a lack of releases one. You don't see the meta changing for two months ahead, and in a game with so small card pool, like LCGs are, that's a problem.

I'm not selling my collection, maybe shelving it for a while, but lots of people (and as far as I know, mostly in the US) just get rid of games that doesn't have any news in a while.

45 minutes ago, Barbacuo said:

Well, my feel is that it's not a balance issue, but a lack of releases one. You don't see the meta changing for two months ahead, and in a game with so small card pool, like LCGs are, that's a problem.

I'm not selling my collection, maybe shelve it for a while, but lot's of people (and as far as I know, mostly in the US) just get rid of games that doesn't have any news in a while.

Good point. Hopefully FFG picks up the pace on the releases. At the very least get some spoiler action and expected release dates going.

7 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Good point. Hopefully FFG picks up the pace on the releases. At the very least get some spoiler action and expected release dates going.

I don't know that we can really blame them for that though. Form all reports the 6 in 6 format was a decision made to address the imbalances from the single core environment and seems to have been made late in the production cycle once those issues came to light and they realized that the play test team with the full set and expansion had failed over corrected certain balance issues in the single core format.

If things had gone to plan we would be seeing the end of the first cycle around now, the Phoenix set next month and than hopefully straight into the new cycle soon after. Having gone to the accelerated release of the first cycle means we were left with a gap while the next cycle was finishing production.

My biggest concerns with L5r at the moment is the small card pool combined with a design that is way too compartmentalized. Which as a result gives 0 possibility of deck building.

Even with the full cycle out, L5r has significantly less cards that would have any TCG/CCG at release. But the biggest killer for deck building is the fact that the game is extremely compartmentalized, 7 different clans with no possibility to use the fate cards of any other faction , on the conflict side there is simply too many cards that are a no brainier inclusion, role cards that prevent you from using certain strategies ... In the end, the only real decision is to figure out what you are going to splash and even then it's pretty obvious most of the time. Considering how insanely compartmentalized the game is, it would require at least triple the amount of cards we have now to make things interesting to build with which will take for ever at this rate.

If characters had an influence value so we could splash fate cards and if the role cards were not a thing the deck-building possibilities would explode without having to print a single card.

Deck building is the key in any card game, no deck building -> no test -> no play .

Phoenix pack is coming soon but it it will only impact phoenix and if we have to wait 2 or 3 month for something after I am afraid it will kill the game.

Of course the fact that Scorpion combines being the most frustrating deck to play against and by far the most powerful deck, doesn't help enjoying the current meta.

New cards are the lifeblood of any card game. With a TCG, it takes more time to collect cards, meaning content takes longer to work through and experience for many casual players. In an LCG, acquisition is trivial, so players move on to the meta and varying experiences in games much more quickly. And thorrk's correct that splitting cards between clans so much means that there's even less 'content' to experience for some players.

L5R veterans will undoubtedly stick it out for more story at whatever pace FFG makes, but to keep the interest of new players or more casual players, we'll need to see more cards and more card-lore-tournament interaction, ideally at a local level where each player can 'make a difference' rather than just at the big tournament level. We need more engagement at the moment, I think.

But your experience is going to vary from store to store.

During nov/dec 2017 people used to complain about Netrunner being left out without any releases and doom-bringing rumors started to spread as "the game is dying". It resulted in many people announcing they were about to quit the game. In fact all other productions were slowed down to allow the intensive release of the imperial cycle. After that, obviously, in addition to the fact that the new cycle needs to be properly designed and tested FFG had to deal with all the other LCG/CCGs they are supporting. The imperial cycle was released in a rushed way only to increase the card pool as fast as possible and establish some solid foundations for the future of the game.

The game has not even a year and complaining about the card pool makes little sense IMHO. The card pool is small obviously. But I'd bet solid gold that if they had prepared let's say 3 cycles before even the core set release and put them on the market at the same pace as they did for the imperial cycle, way more people would have dropped the game, because of the high entry price to be competitive.

You don't get an LCG released every year (at least I hope I already have issues coping with 3 for now ). L5R gave here the opportunity to start from scratch at the same pace as everyone and moderate budget and slowly learn and enjoy seeing the game growing.

I know that FFG pushes hard for the competitive scene for all these games, and for L5R, well since the story is supposed to be written according to the players decisions, there is a need for a competitive scene. However if you are really interested into the competitive LCG with tons of choices and strats at hand, well, you came to L5R too early. I think it's reasonable to not expect something like that for at least a year after the core set release for an LCG.

And I know, I assumed here that this was all about competitive play, because as mentioned Ishi Tonu i you guys are just playing kitchen table games, that should not bother you.

As a quick example, what I like to play in a non competitive environment, is pure clan deck, without any splash. It changes the perception of the game because the designers gave different tools to different clans. Try such meta where only the dragon has an easy option to get rid of an attachment, or only the unicorn can use the Spyglass. The clans will each have big flaws that will be easy to attack. The decks will stand no chance in a competitive environment, but pitted against each other those decks make really fun games.

It might be a bit of the nostalgia factor but as a player of the old 5R, I care about this game, not only the mechanics and the card pool, but about the characters, the story, and how this will translate into the game.

So like the last announcement about a fiction book to be released... well yeah it got me really excited, even if that budget could have been used to bring more cards to the pool instead.

I'm happy that they choose the fiction option because L5R is not the regular LCG. It requires cards and evolving meta for sure , but above all it requires fluff, lots of fluff, catchy characters that we will love or love to hate, interesting plots, surprises, mysteries and epic battles. This is what Rokugan is about. Strip the theme from this game and you end up with a hollow husk

I think I'm just mostly surprised to see scorpion and crab called out for being unbalanced. In my area it is hands down phoenix and dragon that hold the top spots.

1 hour ago, Darksyde said:

I think I'm just mostly surprised to see scorpion and crab called out for being unbalanced. In my area it is hands down phoenix and dragon that hold the top spots.

This is not a surprise, Scorpion and Crab have the exact cards they need out of the core and Imperial cycle. The rest of the clans are missing pieces for their decks. I would not say unbalanced per se but like what I said, they got what they needed. I think the game does need another cycle of cards to happen shortly to keep people interested though.

I think the root of the problem is not balance, but release schedule. Balance would shift if new cards were released into the pool.

Nothing new has been published for nearly two months, and we could get at least another month before the Phoenix Clan Pack is out.

You need the fast pace of LCG releases for a LCG to thrive. I've seen quite a few players sell their whole collection is the last couple of weeks. There is boredom. We don't have a big enough card pool to try different decks within a Clan, there's not enough room for experiment.

Add to that the void in tournament kits and you're left with casual gaming nights in which people will lose interest if the decks they face are always the same 3-4 decks.

The game didnt catch up here, so there are no groups who lost interest to speak of. While i think that mostly everything (story, mechanics which feel like l5r, design, 6x6, balance) what could have been before and immediately after release were spot on, my main issue is with game length. Even feel like balance complaints are not warranted (there was a whole shitstorm about backhanded argument, then policy debate, even before he came out ujiaki) and turned out to be overdramatized.

Inb4 "games in my group are <50 mins all the time therefore your arguments are invalid because my personal experience means that this is the general state", most of the games just drag on for too long (even among top tier players on discord league, video length is sometimes ridiculous) and its really hard to find time to play even one game a day, let alone a mini tournament with 3-4 rounds. I can play three destiny games in that time.

The other issue is roles which are too restrictive for the current cardpool size.

13 hours ago, Aingeru said:

Related to the topic, I am surprised of seeing several people selling their whole collections (typically 3 cores + full Imperial cycle) last weeks.

I do not remember it happening in other LCGs (maybe with L5R LCG is different due to the hight hype of its release) but I would like to know what othe players think about it and if it is something the Community (and maybe FFG too) should be worried about.

Regards,

At this point it's not a problem as someone sells, other one buys collections for 40-70% of MSRP and could easily follow future releases. A real problem is when nobody is buying and i see this much more often. I see lot of sell-off offers that have waiting for many days or weeks.

7 hours ago, Darksyde said:

I think I'm just mostly surprised to see scorpion and crab called out for being unbalanced. In my area it is hands down phoenix and dragon that hold the top spots.

You're just one separate playgroup. Take a look at this from perspective, check data for major post-cycle events (including online ones), check Lotus Pavilion stats etc.

22 minutes ago, kempy said:

At this point it's not a problem as someone sells, other one buys collections for 40-70% of MSRP and could easily follow future releases. A real problem is when nobody is buying and i see this much more often. I see lot of sell-off offers that have waiting for many days or weeks.

While you are right in a vacuum, I personally think that the accumulation of sellings within a relativ small time frame since launch is alarming. Most of the offers I see online are on community channels and include all dynasty packs and sometimes promos. This leads me to the thought that the sellers aren't casuals that tried the game and didn't like it, but people that at least dabbled in the competitive scene and lost interest. When listening to some pro's and people that try to foster a community, I don't think that it is far fetched to think that this could be the symptom of a dissatisfaction of a larger group.

My local store has only has half the numbers that played a few months ago. That, combined with still no appearance of the Q1 store kits, is very dissappointing. I'm hoping some store events will fire up interest again.

On the plus side, I am having a ball with l5r online: random competitive games on jigoku, playing in discord league, chatting in discord. If it wasn't for this, I would have much less interest in this game.

1 hour ago, Hos said:

My local store has only has half the numbers that played a few months ago. That, combined with still no appearance of the Q1 store kits, is very dissappointing. I'm hoping some store events will fire up interest again.

On the plus side, I am having a ball with l5r online: random competitive games on jigoku, playing in discord league, chatting in discord. If it wasn't for this, I would have much less interest in this game.

Same situation here. Without Jigoku I would have made a two month break until now.

15 hours ago, thorrk said:

My biggest concerns with L5r at the moment is the small card pool combined with a design that is way too compartmentalized. Which as a result gives 0 possibility of deck building.

Even with the full cycle out, L5r has significantly less cards that would have any TCG/CCG at release. But the biggest killer for deck building is the fact that the game is extremely compartmentalized, 7 different clans with no possibility to use the fate cards of any other faction , on the conflict side there is simply too many cards that are a no brainier inclusion, role cards that prevent you from using certain strategies ... In the end, the only real decision is to figure out what you are going to splash and even then it's pretty obvious most of the time. Considering how insanely compartmentalized the game is, it would require at least triple the amount of cards we have now to make things interesting to build with which will take for ever at this rate.

If characters had an influence value so we could splash fate cards and if the role cards were not a thing the deck-building possibilities would explode without having to print a single card.

Deck building is the key in any card game, no deck building -> no test -> no play .

Phoenix pack is coming soon but it it will only impact phoenix and if we have to wait 2 or 3 month for something after I am afraid it will kill the game.

Of course the fact that Scorpion combines being the most frustrating deck to play against and by far the most powerful deck, doesn't help enjoying the current meta.

Interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience with roles, as two players who use the same clan but different roles might end up with completely different decks. Even using the same role, most clans can get at least a couple different decks built, which is pretty good considering the game isn't even a year old yet.

Also, the Phoenix pack will have cards for other clans, as well as cards that other clans can splash. Obviously Phoenix are the focus of the pack, but it's not like all the other clans are left with nothing.

12 hours ago, Darksyde said:

I think I'm just mostly surprised to see scorpion and crab called out for being unbalanced. In my area it is hands down phoenix and dragon that hold the top spots.

Phoenix are good, but the problem is they rely so much on their Glory. If the opponent can reliably dishonor characters, a Phoenix deck is completely shut down.

6 hours ago, Dovla said:

The game didnt catch up here, so there are no groups who lost interest to speak of. While i think that mostly everything (story, mechanics which feel like l5r, design, 6x6, balance) what could have been before and immediately after release were spot on, my main issue is with game length. Even feel like balance complaints are not warranted (there was a whole shitstorm about backhanded argument, then policy debate, even before he came out ujiaki) and turned out to be overdramatized.

Inb4 "games in my group are <50 mins all the time therefore your arguments are invalid because my personal experience means that this is the general state", most of the games just drag on for too long (even among top tier players on discord league, video length is sometimes ridiculous) and its really hard to find time to play even one game a day, let alone a mini tournament with 3-4 rounds. I can play three destiny games in that time.

The other issue is roles which are too restrictive for the current cardpool size.

Are you playing competitive? If not, why let roles be a restriction instead of an additional choice?

In regards to game length, most of my games take a little over an hour to play, and I am fine with that. Honestly, if all the games were 2-3 turns, I'd probably drop the game, as that's not really enough time to get to your decks' most interesting mechanics and combos.

With regard to people selling their core sets, I always see people creating immense expectations about a product, buying it in the pre-releases, and shortly afterwards they are selling everything. I think it's more a matter of anxiety than a game thermometer.
I agree that we are all looking forward to new cards and considering only the launch of the phoenix pack this is a bit discouraging, but is not that much to leave the game.
I think one factor for this premature exhaustion are the online matches, as I've already commented on another topic, this environment does not favor the creation of non-competitive decks, and you'll usually face the same variations of deckbuilding many times, I love jigoku especially for training and the convenience of being able to play at home whenever you want, there are always people online, but I slowed down because I also felt this saturation of many similar matches, which ends up generating some boredom and let's say that the L5R matches are naturally exhaustive.
I know that nowadays it is more difficult to meet personally to play, but when I do this I use to explore more casual decks and splashes, some weaker (but funny) buildings just to get away from the metagame, obviously that for this work your friends also have to be interested in games like this and play with decks on the same level. Of course this can also be done in jigoku by combining in the discord for example ..
Anyway, i think it is not deckbuilding that is extremely limited, but the competitive deckbuilding of tier 1 decks, but that's not all the game has to offer. So I'm not much of a fan of weekly leagues for example, when wherever players meet they're using their top decks, I prefer more casual games in person and leave the competition for championships for example, but off course if you have enought time to do both it can be pretty cool too.

5 minutes ago, L5RBr said:

With regard to people selling their core sets, I always see people creating immense expectations about a product, buying it in the pre-releases, and shortly afterwards they are selling everything. I think it's more a matter of anxiety than a game thermometer.
I agree that we are all looking forward to new cards and considering only the launch of the phoenix pack this is a bit discouraging, but is not that much to leave the game.
I think one factor for this premature exhaustion are the online matches, as I've already commented on another topic, this environment does not favor the creation of non-competitive decks, and you'll usually face the same variations of deckbuilding many times, I love jigoku especially for training and the convenience of being able to play at home whenever you want, there are always people online, but I slowed down because I also felt this saturation of many similar matches, which ends up generating some boredom and let's say that the L5R matches are naturally exhaustive.
I know that nowadays it is more difficult to meet personally to play, but when I do this I use to explore more casual decks and splashes, some weaker (but funny) buildings just to get away from the metagame, obviously that for this work your friends also have to be interested in games like this and play with decks on the same level. Of course this can also be done in jigoku by combining in the discord for example ..
Anyway, i think it is not deckbuilding that is extremely limited, but the competitive deckbuilding of tier 1 decks, but that's not all the game has to offer. So I'm not much of a fan of weekly leagues for example, when wherever players meet they're using their top decks, I prefer more casual games in person and leave the competition for leagues for example, but off course if you have enought time to do both it can be pretty cool too.

Really? In our CCG league, we tended to play whatever caught our fancy and leave the top-tier decks for tournaments (with a couple exceptions).

Still, the focus on competitive decks is why I've never gotten into online play for this game.

I have an issue understanding a few points that keep popping up:

•"The card pool isn't big enough" - The core set was the largest core set release of an LCG to date, wasn't it? And then the release schedule for the next 6 expansions was drastically pushed up, yeah? I'm sorry, but if you're sad this isn't a CCG or are sad that this isn't an LCG with 10 years under it's belt already, well there's just no making you happy.

•"The gap between releases is too long" - It's also not typical of what the future will hold. It's a direct consequence of getting more cards into the pool earlier rather than later. Would you have preferred the alternative where the schedule released at it's intended pace and we'd be stuck with a much smaller card pool for much longer? Probably not. Once we're back on track, releases should be more comfortable (and if they're not, *then* is when this complaint starts to make some sense). However, if you don't have a couple months of patience for the release schedule to get back into whack, then you probably don't have the sort of patience required for any card game. It's a brand new game - ya gotta give it a minute.

•"X Clan is too good and it makes everything unfun" - There will always be a "top clan." You learn to play around it, or you enjoy your time playing it until another release knocks you outta the spot. Chess is about as fair as a game gets and even then white has the advantage. Card games are definitely not chess.

33 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I have an issue understanding a few points that keep popping up:

While I'm largely with Tsubaki in considering these minor problems, they are problems. Anyway, just to play devil's advocate, let me try to add the answers to your points.

"The card pool isn't big enough." The core set may indeed have been the largest of an LCG to date, but they're also supporting 7 factions, in a game where you need 2 decks, and we can't share cards from our dynasty deck. For any given faction, the available cards aren't as big as those raw numbers make it look, just due to the way the game is designed. Obviously this is a problem that will be mitigated with time, but it is an issue at the moment - how big of one depends on the player, but it's a legit issue.

"The gap between releases is too long." Again, a side effect of the accelerated release of the Imperial Cycle. I wasn't a fan of that fast release, and now we pay for it in a second way. Again, we all expect them to get on a regular schedule soon, but they're not there now. The fact that we're largely in the dark concerning future releases certainly doesn't help.

"X clan is too good." This was a regular ongoing problem in the old game too. To expect it to go away is, indeed, unrealistic. But it's similarly unrealistic not to expect people to complain about it

2 hours ago, L5RBr said:

I think one factor for this premature exhaustion are the online matches, as I've already commented on another topic, this environment does not favor the creation of non-competitive decks, and you'll usually face the same variations of deckbuilding many times, I love jigoku especially for training and the convenience of being able to play at home whenever you want, there are always people online, but I slowed down because I also felt this saturation of many similar matches, which ends up generating some boredom and let's say that the L5R matches are naturally exhaustive.

That really gives me the impression players apply the same consumer habits to L5R, a physical card game to a virtual equivalent like Hearthstone. If you start playing 10 matches per day, no wonder why you get bored after 2-3 weeks. You cannot expect the same level of progression, support and new elements injected to the game if it is on a physical support opposed to a virtual one. L5R is meant to be a physical card game and resources like Jigoku or OCTGN are for sure useful if you need to train yourself for an upcoming tournament, but to play for pleasure? I don't think so. A virtual card game can erata the cards on the fly, as often as they want with barely no additional cost. When you talk about physical support, that's another story. Your card once it's printed and sold, you will not go to each player's house and apply a sticker on it. Cards need to be beta tested way more, design takes more time and because the game plays with actual physical components it will take longer than a virtual one, only because you have to manually apply all the interaction on the table.

You cannot expect FFG to keep up supporting a physical game at the pace required by a virtual card game just because you made too many matches online and it's no longer fun to you.

I have the impression to state the obvious here. I really wonder what proportion of the people who are selling their cards were playing most of their games in Jigoku instead of a real table?