The comments from Richard Garfield and second hand reports of FFG staff indicate some vauge ideas of how the game will grow and expand.

Thats understandable! Such a new product means any plans put down now may not match reality down the road.

currently it looks like Richard wants both new houses and original houses in the future products. What that means exactly is a bit tricky, would the original houses have new cards?

While mixing sets should happen I feel like doing it too soon would feel bad if I pulled old cards mixed with brand new cards.

Also a mix of new and old cards Would be a very different value proposition to the purchaser then the first set with 7 original houses.

I think mixing sets should happen in some sort of special mega anthology set release that comes out every few sets and like a magic core set reprints a bunch of out of print cards in new combinations.

Personally I want to see some sets that like magic’s “blocks” have very strong themes that tie the factions together.

The first set establishes a nice fun anything goes feel. This leaves it open to explore neat themed sets down the road.

I would love to see L5R clans get a keyforge set all to themselves.

I suspect/guess that we'll see maybe the houses rotate in and out of each set. Maybe some weaker Houses get some loving while the stronger one sit it out.

Perhaps the first question here for us as gamers is, do we expect that new sets will contain new and unique cards or will FFG be OK putting some or even all of the old cards onto new cards? Would it be OK to have Mars and Shadown with card repeats to have maybe "Venus" as a house that has Steam Punk flavoured cards? Maybe players get 1-2 repeat houses and 1-2 fresh new ones per deck. For terms of balance this may be best, as long as there is some part of the process that ensures players don't just buy new decks with all 3 Houses being old cards.

34 minutes ago, Amanal said:

I suspect/guess that we'll see maybe the houses rotate in and out of each set. Maybe some weaker Houses get some loving while the stronger one sit it out.

Perhaps the first question here for us as gamers is, do we expect that new sets will contain new and unique cards or will FFG be OK putting some or even all of the old cards onto new cards? Would it be OK to have Mars and Shadown with card repeats to have maybe "Venus" as a house that has Steam Punk flavoured cards? Maybe players get 1-2 repeat houses and 1-2 fresh new ones per deck. For terms of balance this may be best, as long as there is some part of the process that ensures players don't just buy new decks with all 3 Houses being old cards.

Interesting option they may opt for.

That said, I'm asking myself and have already asked it before : Are the "vanilla" decks be outdated as some point ? Some have answered that they will always be valid because unique. That's correct but to me it works until FFG expands the poll of cards they compose their decks from. What will happen then? Will we all sing in chorus : "Bah it's ten dollars, it's not like I was buying a 100$ boosters box for another CCG" ?

I'm not a "true" gamer in the sense that I love playing games for the pure pleasure of playing, not necessarily winning. So,to me If my first deck or few decks do please me and I get linked to them because I can play them, I love the composition of the deck, the three houses in presence, etc, what will happen the day FFG expands its database of unique cards ? Is it going to die against new decks ? Because of game design that will break vanilla decks or will they keep in mind that they need to balance the new houses/cards so that it's still possible to win with an old deck against a new one ?

Power creep is a huge topic.

There is intentional power creep meant to make old products obsolete. Or in video games new elements are often introduced over powered to encourage players to use them and once the players have the required skill and the devs have enough data the elements are rebalanced

there are also many things that cause unintended power creep.

The combinations of old and new elements become too large to test.

The new elements feel balanced at first however the old elements are played with more skill then the new and eventually once the skill gap closes the new elements can prove much stronger.

Keyforge dodges the combination bloat as they control precisely how old and new sets combine.

I don't want rotations. Justake everything balanced all the time.

I dont think they know if rotation is needed for this game.

Making everything balanced all the time is impossible.

Balance is something that changes across player skill level and time.

1 minute ago, TylerTT said:

I dont think they know if rotation is needed for this game.

Making everything balanced all the time is impossible.

Balance is something that changes across player skill level and time.

The shackle mechanic can be used to balance powerdifferences between sets.

I just don't want to retire a deck because an expansion came out.

I get the impression that they will avoid that if possible.

Much of what rotation accomplishes is already accomplished by not allowing players to construct their own decks.

in a normal TCG you get rotation in part to help clear out old cards to clear up space for new cards that may not be as good. in key forge you dont worry about old cards being too good because they are stuck in old decks.

3 hours ago, dirtmuncher said:

The shackle mechanic can be used to balance powerdifferences between sets.

I just don't want to retire a deck because an expansion came out.

It won't affect tournaments though.

3 hours ago, TylerTT said:

I get the impression that they will avoid that if possible.

Much of what rotation accomplishes is already accomplished by not allowing players to construct their own decks.

in a normal TCG you get rotation in part to help clear out old cards to clear  up space for new cards that may not be as good. in key forge you dont worry about old cards being too good because they are stuck in old decks.

The problem with card design is that it is impossible to create two cards with different effects that have the same powerlevel. So if I design a second set, I will try to get to a similar powerlevel than the first one, but at best it will be either slightly stronger or weaker. If it is weaker, you will probably sell less, but if it is stronger you pretty much have powercreep and have to design your future sets on that benchmark. This is why I think that powercreep is inevitable without rotation.

I don't see why there being some old cards in a set matters. It isn't any different from getting a new deck in an old set.

What I expect is that they keep the 350 card sets and use 7 houses. That seems to provide lots of variance while still having familiarity.

They will probably rotate old houses with new houses. So 3 or 4 new ones and the rest old for the 2nd set. Then 2 or 3 houses from there on out with different old houses mixed in. Depending on how many themes they have.

Old houses will have a mix of new cards that work in their theme eith some old cards. Even if one of your houses is all old cards, There is still 2 other houses.

In the AMA Garfield said there were whole mechanics they excluded because they diluted the themes of the houses. They can create variants that are similar but distinct.

I think bringing in some old cards along with the new will be great. Just as long as they get rid of the the least favorite of the previous cards. Weaker cards or cards that are less interesting can go. With this game being online, FFG can use all the data they are collecting and adapt the algorithm according to the data we are providing them through gameplay, but only with the current cards. With the data they have access to they should be able to find our favorite decks, cards, houses, play preferences and combos without us having to tell them by applying data science to the information gained.

I'm not sure they can do anything but rotate. The unique name and backer means that without opaque sleeves, you'd know what cards you were pulling.

I'm interested to know what the common, uncommon, rare selection constitutes. In this system, it defines which cards are more likely to be in a deck. Put better, you'll only have so many rare cards in a given deck. This means that they could put haymakers (powerful cards) as rare cards allowing the average power-level of a deck relatively consistent, even with randomization.

My bet is that a "season 2" would be about new houses. And new card backs, (I'm thinking squares this time)

If they do keep the houses then they could fix the weaker ones and nerf the strongest. Stick the power creep in the weak houses.

If they rotate they could reprint some of the old cards, depending on power level.

9 hours ago, Duciris said:

I'm not sure they can do anything but rotate. The unique name and backer means that without opaque sleeves, you'd know what cards you were pulling.

Every card in a deck, including older ones (if they choose to put them in future decks) will have the same cardback, so that won't be a problem.

This game needs a season with at least one Cthulhu-themed house in the future. Every game needs a Cthulhu-themed expansion at some point.

Except for Star Wars Legion. ?

Dianoga disagrees.

I though Dianoga would be more suited for Destiny though.

Just to derail the thread in one big go, but I love this, Palette-Swap Ninja do the entire story of New Hope to the Beatles, Sergent Peppers.

5 hours ago, Ooipooi said:

This game needs a season with at least one Cthulhu-themed house in the future. Every game needs a Cthulhu-themed expansion at some point.

I not a fan of Cthulhu, so I can do without it. What I would like is a house with more humor. Maybe something unexpected for a card game faction, like a faction that is fairly weak themselves but have abilities to make more money and do more things through the other factions working harder and more often. Maybe have a card called overtime is authorized or something similar.

One thing I really like about KeyForge is its lack of external IPs - no Star Wars, no Cthulhu, etc. I think AEG nailed it with Smash-Up when they called it the Obligatory Cthulhu Expansion. I really like the idea of a new universe to explore.

7 hours ago, Palpster said:

Every card in a deck, including older ones (if they choose to put them in future decks) will have the same cardback, so that won't be a problem.

I was meaning that you couldn't add cards from a new set to an existing deck. That future "expansions" would necessarily involve new decks, not packs.

I mean it may not be Cuthluh, but st some point there will probably be a faction of cultists worshipping a pseudo-god.

1 hour ago, Duciris said:

One thing I really like about KeyForge is its lack of external IPs - no Star Wars, no Cthulhu, etc.

Cthulhu is now public domain.

Not that I want to see it here—it's been done to death elsewhere. But there are no IP conflicts with it. (Which is why it's been done to death.)

8 hours ago, Xelto said:

Cthulhu is now public domain.

Not that I want to see it here—it's been done to death elsewhere. But there are no IP conflicts with it. (Which is why it's been done to death.)

They are blatant about it now...

That one has the best expansion title I've ever seen. It's also probably the worst expansion for Smash Up out of all of them, but hey, can't win 'em all!

2 hours ago, Palpster said:

That one has the best expansion title I've ever seen. It's also probably the worst expansion for Smash Up out of all of them, but hey, can't win 'em all!

Best SU expansion to be played by itself? But yeah you are correct, you really need to play several of the cthulhu factions at once to have those madness cards come up in the game. Otherwise it's ok.

I can't wait for Oops you did it again, not because I'm a Britney Spears fan, but because no we'll finaly get a Cowboys faction!