13 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

Did any of those choices directly control how every player could build their decks?

In a sense yes.

"Winner of this tournament will get access to this awesome new sword!" or "Pick which clan gets to take home this awesome personality", or even "The new Clan SH is Shadowland centric, because the a-hole that won was using Shadowlands cards, yaaay!".

I remember how Phoenix pretty much got the lion's share of the winnings during the 4 Winds saga by getting 2 out of 4 of Toturi's children in Clan. I even remember how Dragon went full on Borg and got a ton of personalities from other clans, that the original clan couldn't play with, all because of some storyline prizes.

Back then Experienced versions of personalities were a thing, and getting an XP version of a beloved character was something everyone looked forward to. Imagine the look on the Crane player's face when Doji Reju jumped ship to Dragon due to some random dude winning a Tourney?

Those kinds of choices locked out cards for the entirety of an Edition. The fact that the Dev Team wants to give a Nod to tournament "story" choices without setting things in stone is a nice gesture IMO..

So two roles per clan with each one chaning every 8 months? I like that. I think everyone can be pleased with this solution. Opens deck building options bit keeps role picking relevant

28 minutes ago, El_Ganso said:

In a sense yes.

"Winner of this tournament will get access to this awesome new sword!" or "Pick which clan gets to take home this awesome personality", or even "The new Clan SH is Shadowland centric, because the a-hole that won was using Shadowlands cards, yaaay!".

I remember how Phoenix pretty much got the lion's share of the winnings during the 4 Winds saga by getting 2 out of 4 of Toturi's children in Clan. I even remember how Dragon went full on Borg and got a ton of personalities from other clans, that the original clan couldn't play with, all because of some storyline prizes.

Back then Experienced versions of personalities were a thing, and getting an XP version of a beloved character was something everyone looked forward to. Imagine the look on the Crane player's face when Doji Reju jumped ship to Dragon due to some random dude winning a Tourney?

Those kinds of choices locked out cards for the entirety of an Edition. The fact that the Dev Team wants to give a Nod to tournament "story" choices without setting things in stone is a nice gesture IMO..

I mean those just decided new cards. It didn't restrict deckbuilding for players.

OP here. I think the new system described by FFG is ok. 2 roles is a lot better than 1, and changing every 4/8 months is interesting.

Question for the group though, does anyone understand how this first new role is being chosen? I've heard various references to it somehow involving the kotei season, but no details on how the actual selection is occurring. Is it being voted on by hatamotos or champs? Just decided by FFG? Picked at GenCon?

5 minutes ago, j-mart said:

OP here. I think the new system described by FFG is ok. 2 roles is a lot better than 1, and changing every 4/8 months is interesting.

Question for the group though, does anyone understand how this first new role is being chosen? I've heard various references to it somehow involving the kotei season, but no details on how the actual selection is occurring. Is it being voted on by hatamotos or champs? Just decided by FFG? Picked at GenCon?

As I understand it, it's going to be based off the Elemental votes that have been taking place at the Kotei-level events.

Everyone who competes in one gets a vote towards which role they want their clan to get. If a clan currently has that role, that clan gets 10 Elemental points.

And then, starting with the clan that has the least Elemental points (so basically they had the least popular role), they get assigned whatever role they voted for the most. And then the clan with the next least-points gets the one they voted for the most that still remains, working up the list. So basically if a clan has a incredibly popular role (so... a powerful choice), they'll probably get their second role assigned last.

9 minutes ago, XCoconutMonkey06X said:

@Danwarr You have to take into consideration L5R as a whole. The game was built on the previous premise that the community would have somewhat of a say in how the game progresses. No other CCG or LCG has that. Roles is a way to implement that interaction without it pulling the game way out of whack. As for the "segments of the card pool" you reference being locked out of, that equates to what, less than a handful of cards per clan? I don't think 2-3 cards on the shelf until an applicable role is selected breaks the game. They can be incentive for the hatamotos to choose said role when the time rolls around. There has to be benefits and consequences for being able to impact the game's direction. You get access to some cards and lose access to others. A chunk of the draw of L5R was that you could impact the game. By removing the role locks, there really is no direct impact and boon for achieving hatamoto status. And you can't compare this to other LCGs because it wasn't designed to be like those other LCGs. FFG wanted to keep what made L5R special as best they could and I think they were able to do that, mostly.

FFG has included plenty of other ways for players to interact with the game. GenCon had the Meishodo story event. Worlds had the Winter Court Fate of Flames story choice. The entire Kotei season has been about control of Toshi Ranbo. World champions still get to design a card. All of the local organized play stuff is integrated as well.

Also, the number of locked cards relative to the size of the total card pool is sizable. While there were only 2 Role locked cards in the core set, out of 120 cards in the Imperial cycle, 21 of them are Keeper/Seeker locked or Element Locked. DotV had 2 Role locked cards. The Elemental cycle is going to have another 19 Element locked cards, 14 of which are Clan specific. Just under 10% of the current card pool is Role locked. Some of these cards haven't seen play in a competitive environment since the game was release last October. Why hold people back from doing so?

This actually solves all of my issues.

We have 2 options so theoretically we can always habe Keeper and Seeker.

We also aren't held by a single person but the wider community with a more accessible tournement.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/7/18/something-is-coming/

Here. This is how the other roles will be chosen, for overlapping 8-month intervals.

1 hour ago, PMAvers said:

As I understand it, it's going to be based off the Elemental votes that have been taking place at the Kotei-level events.

Everyone who competes in one gets a vote towards which role they want their clan to get. If a clan currently has that role, that clan gets 10 Elemental points.

And then, starting with the clan that has the least Elemental points (so basically they had the least popular role), they get assigned whatever role they voted for the most. And then the clan with the next least-points gets the one they voted for the most that still remains, working up the list. So basically if a clan has a incredibly popular role (so... a powerful choice), they'll probably get their second role assigned last.

Huh, that's a interesting idea. Did people rank a list 1-10, or just a single vote?

13 minutes ago, j-mart said:

Huh, that's a interesting idea. Did people rank a list 1-10, or just a single vote?

I havn't actually been able to get out to a Kotei yet, but as worded it's supposed to be a single vote. In case of ties, the first tie-breaker is which role got the most votes out of all the clans, and then if there's still a tie it's chosen at random.

6 hours ago, El_Ganso said:

Back in my day, we used to offer up Bounties and Bribes to get a desired Storyline prize picked.

We would pool up our rares and such and would make callouts like "The Top Phoenix player that chooses X as a prize will get this Bounty"

This generation needs to level up their Diplomacy skill IMO

Communities discussing what Roles to pic, and then making sure their Top Dog picks said role, seems more like a Feature not a Bug (at least looking at it from the Old School perspective of an entire clan deciding which Storyline Prizes to pick).

Ah yes.. Mantis players tend not to favor this system, given how often it was used to basically screw Mantis over.

I like this system. I did feel like we had gone too long without adjusting roles. Things should keep fresh with this method, and things changing every 4 months should give us something constant to look forward to.

On 7/13/2018 at 1:10 PM, Foxtrot Four said:

Also each clan should have access to 2 separate roles. Much like a cycle of cards.

We have our current roles.

Then at WORLDS we choose our second role.

Then at 2019 Worlds we choose our 2nd role, at the same time we then lose access to our role from 2018 worlds.

SOMEONE PICK UP THE PHONE

BECAUSE I CALLED IT!

Good to see that they are opening up roles a bit, but to me it just seems like this is damage control; they committed to role locks early on without knowing how it would play out (a noble experiment, at least) and now they are seeing negative reaction from parts of the player base, so they are trying to change things to please more people. As I kind of suspected, they still aren't completely removing the role locks that they have so heavily pushed as a cornerstone of the tournament system; they are too invested in them.

I still think freeing the roles is the best solution, but I think FFG deserves credit for admitting issues with the system and making an effort to improve it.

16 hours ago, ZebioLizard2 said:

22 hours ago, El_Ganso said:

Back in my day, we used to offer up Bounties and Bribes to get a desired Storyline prize picked.

We would pool up our rares and such and would make callouts like "The Top Phoenix player that chooses X as a prize will get this Bounty"

This generation needs to level up their Diplomacy skill IMO

Communities discussing what Roles to pic, and then making sure their Top Dog picks said role, seems more like a Feature not a Bug (at least looking at it from the Old School perspective of an entire clan deciding which Storyline Prizes to pick).

Ah yes.. Mantis players tend not to favor this system, given how often it was used to basically screw Mantis over.

I always felt that was how much of the "choose a character to be corrupted by the taint" move worked. It also seemed to cause much of the "which clan will take which new territory as a colony" tournament season.

13 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

Good to see that they are opening up roles a bit, but to me it just seems like this is damage control; they committed to role locks early on without knowing how it would play out (a noble experiment, at least) and now they are seeing negative reaction from parts of the player base, so they are trying to change things to please more people. As I kind of suspected, they still aren't completely removing the role locks that they have so heavily pushed as a cornerstone of the tournament system; they are too invested in them.

I still think freeing the roles is the best solution, but I think FFG deserves credit for admitting issues with the system and making an effort to improve it.

They announced before Worlds 2017 that we'd have access to 2 roles at a time. They've just been sitting on the how of it.

The original rules were quite straightforward that the second role would for only one event. This is pretty obviously a change from the original plan. Which is good.

2 hours ago, HamHamJ2 said:

The original rules were quite straightforward that the second role would for only one event. This is pretty obviously a change from the original plan. Which is good.

Yeah. This is at least a step in the right direction. We need more deckbuilding options.

I'm stil not a fan of the way roles work in general, but I definitely think this is an improvement over the current method with 1 role per clan.

@Danwarr I could have an unpopular opinion but I don't see that small of a card pool locked an issue. It makes the role selection process have that much more meaning and impact. You still have access to 90% of the cards with a rotating 10%, depending on role selection.

In the end though, I think we are stuck on opposite sides of the fence here, lol. At least the new multi-role process seems to somewhat bridge the gap.

Well they did exactly what i was hoping they would do, so nothing to complain about. We will have access to both roles which will strongly open deck-building possibilities and the change of roles will also be a lot more dynamic and accessible.

At this stage we need to give that mechanic a bit more time to see if it is good, 2 scenarios are possible:

-It is just annoying an restrict your deck-building option for no real upsides.

-It allow to refresh the meta every 4 month by changing the card pool without having to print new cards.

-Both

We will see how it goes but the old "one role per year" system was clearly bad, glad they improved it.

The issue is mostly one of choice. What I absolutely despise in the initial system is having a handful of players make decisions for every other player. In the new system, a lot more people can hope to get a vote.

16 hours ago, j-mart said:

Huh, that's a interesting idea. Did people rank a list 1-10, or just a single vote?

Kotei were a single vote by all participants. However from the article:

• The elemental roles chosen at the Winter Court World Champion will be drafted by each clan's top finisher in the event.
• The roles chosen after the Elemental Championship phases will be decided by the votes cast by the top performers in those events.

More faster shift in roles during the year... Yep something I hoped for!

I like the role system for deckbuilding purposes. I think it's a flavorful way to put a power creep limiter in L5R.

I dislike the forced roles for tournament play, two is "better" but still not ideal. I'd rather have no forced roles at all. I hate the idea that because some other Dragon player went with Fire, I have to play Fire.

46 minutes ago, Teslacrashed said:

I hate the idea that because some other Dragon player went with Fire, I have to play Fire.

The second role now is chosen by general vote, so youll have more agency on what your clan can play