And so another one bites the dust.

FFG has announced the end of official support for A Game of Thrones 2.0. They are ostensibly still getting product sporadically, but the game seems to be mostly dead for the near future.

I think the 3 cooperative LCGs are stable enough and well suited the model, so they are safe. But that leaves L5R as the sole competitive LCG, is this the end of the experiment of LCGs for a competitive card game?

Competitors have shown up with Destiny for CCGs, or Keyforge for UCGs. Is it just unsustainable, or is there a way for Competitve LCGs to work? And if not, is there a replacement coming?

As much as I would like them to come out with another competitive LCG...I think they are done. Eventually the cost to buy in to the game is so high that they can’t attract new players to offset the ones that leave.

I agree the coop model fits the LCG best.

Or They need very agressive card rotation!
something like the new base set + two cycles? So there would be maximum of one base set and 12 smal expansion packs to come in as new player... maybe Also rotating deluxe expansions...

but all in all you have to keep rotation of sets really fast, so that new player can come in to the game Anytime and get all cards that needed really easily. The bad point is that card pool would be quite small all the time. The good point would be that card pool would be small all the time and new sets would change the meta very quickly!

Keyforge a kind of does that. You only need one game deck and newer need to upgrade and you can allways come in and just buy one gaming deck and play,, but you can not build the decks. So a deckbuilder would need super fast rotation indeed to come even near the level of Keyforge. (I don`t like keyforge at all, but it is Great for tournament play). But if rotation would be like two seasons, or two cycles. It would mean that if you play two years, you will have all the same cards that everyone else, without buying any old cards. That could be enough. If someone wants to get competative faster. He could buy one old season and have all competative cards in one year. That could be economically possible to people to do... but if someone has 10 seasons behind. He would have 8 sets of cards that he can newer ever use anymore... can that work? Maybe somekind of Magic the cathering where They Are use old cards as you like, and use only the new cards tournaments, but in Magic it works because there Are so Many players. In every other game. More formats just makes tournaments so small that why bother...

it is a dilemma...

Coop definitely fits the best for the LCGs.

For competitive games, I think we could see FFG return to CCGs. I personally hope so. I like LCGs a lot, but as theme games to play with friends, not as competitive games with weekly tournaments. The only LCG tournament scene I enjoyed was Netrunner and that was just because the game was so fantastic in its beginning. Even with Netrunner the slow infusion of cards just didn't work for me. Plus it missed the hype generated by a typical CCG release. Drafting a new set is a lot of fun that you never get with LCGs. For me, I wish FFG would put effort into a good CCG, provide great OP support and learn from their Destiny mistakes. The CCG market is ripe for a good game. Right now it only has kid games, Magic and Magic clones.

The problem is that now we're back to the predatory CCG model or the even more predatory Keyforge model if you want to play competitive card games. Sad really.

Keyforge is the least predatory. To jump onto the hot new thing is $10. It always will be. Maybe a bit more to crack a few packs or buy an opened dexk, but low entry. I doubt there is room for 2 Keyforges though.

FFG got out of CCGs for a reason. Destiny gets by on novelty and the brand.

I think a competitive LCG could get by with a 2 year rotation akin to Destiny. Rotation occurs with the first box released after worlds, or for the holiday season. Everyone after that until the next box rotates with it.

Keep a core box that you only need 1 of as evergreen. Then a faction pack or deluxe for each faction. Because they are faction based, it doesnt create a major buy-in. I would be fine with going with the latest faction pack for eaxh faction, but less frequent than every 2 years. Maybe 3 or 4 years at most. Even Core could rotate like that.

Yep... ccg is dead end. Magic can still do it, but all new and other old have died!
quick rotation gives everyone change to compete if They want to. Home players can clock down any two years phase They want to use by themselves. So that could solve that problem.
or you can use any two sequantial seasons/phases/cycles... but that could lead very bad dead end if there ever will be two very good ”seasons” and everyone only would play those. So pure quick rotation is most likely better.

Honestly, I don't see competitive LCG's going anywhere soon. They've really just had a bad string of luck with licensees lately. Heck, I don't even feel bad about AGOT, since that game had almost a 20 year run and was going to run out of books sooner or later.

I wouldn't be surprised if Marvel is a test bed for looking at different ways of distributing cards, though. Like, say, what the response to the higher price point of the core set is. (But only requiring one core.) It'll probably be a year or two until something else gets announced though due to dev time.

My prediction, a new coop LCG gets announced at Gencon 2020

Agot coop

hmm... actually it could be possible, but maybe not... (fight against white walkers aka semi coop...)

but yeah, coops seems to work in longer time period better, but there can not be too Many.

i am not getting Marwell coop, because I have allready two coops to follow... so They Sooner or later Are gonna eat eachothers. There is Also Jime coop etc. In the board game segment, so the competition is fierce even among FFGs own titles!

In the co-op space, I could actually see a Revised Core coming out for Arkham if Marvel does well. Night of the Zealot is... fine... but boy has encounter design come a long way since then. Maybe a new campaign with a few extra scenarios? The Core really feels right now like "that thing you buy two of and then buy the campaign you *actually* want to play."

I think they could up the price point and at least give a full playset of the Player cards. Extra 50 cards or so

Not sure how to really revamp the encounters. They still need the Standard sets. Or maybe make a rule where you can use some in place of the Standards like in the Return packs. Masks is fine, and the House is a good tutorial. The real issue is the poorly designed Devourer Below.

I actually think the biggest mistake other than the player cards is the Midnight Masks set. The encounter cards should have been a separate set since they are used so much. And the Arkham locations also should have been their own set. Just set up a nice central playground with maybe a couple unique to that Scenario. Leave a few location symbols unused for the guture.

Then they can reuse the Arkham set for scenarios set in Arkham like Threads of Fate. Familiar and yet new.

Actually, something I could see with Night of the Zealot would be that they could expand the second scenario into a series of scenarios instead and play with the concept of "time" more. Like, you get a map of town with rumors about cultist activity that you've heard from your previous investigations. The hospital, the university, etc. Traveling to a location gives you some "time" marks on the campaign log, and failing the scenario gives you some extra as you recover and rally. After completing a scenario, you have the option of going to the ritual site or investigating another rumor and possibly more clues and XP that can help you in the final fight. Too much time spent would be the trigger for the "hour grows late," but you might be better armed to deal with it.

5 hours ago, PMAvers said:

Actually, something I could see with Night of the Zealot would be that they could expand the second scenario into a series of scenarios instead and play with the concept of "time" more. Like, you get a map of town with rumors about cultist activity that you've heard from your previous investigations. The hospital, the university, etc. Traveling to a location gives you some "time" marks on the campaign log, and failing the scenario gives you some extra as you recover and rally. After completing a scenario, you have the option of going to the ritual site or investigating another rumor and possibly more clues and XP that can help you in the final fight. Too much time spent would be the trigger for the "hour grows late," but you might be better armed to deal with it.

Or they could even just make all the scenarios use Arkham.

On 10/3/2019 at 10:11 PM, Radix2309 said:

And so another one bites the dust.

FFG has announced the end of official support for A Game of Thrones 2.0. They are ostensibly still getting product sporadically, but the game seems to be mostly dead for the near future.

I think the 3 cooperative LCGs are stable enough and well suited the model, so they are safe. But that leaves L5R as the sole competitive LCG, is this the end of the experiment of LCGs for a competitive card game?

Competitors have shown up with Destiny for CCGs, or Keyforge for UCGs. Is it just unsustainable, or is there a way for Competitve LCGs to work? And if not, is there a replacement coming?

I think the main consideration right now when it comes to the gaming market in general is product cost, consumer expectations and sales predictability.

LCG's really don't compete in the same way as CCG's simply because they are contained games, there is little to no third party market and the consumer base is generally smaller for LCG as the franchises upon which they are built don't seem to impact the size of the audience. In general each set sells less than the last, so your core set sales will ultimately determine the size of your next set and that set will determine the size of the sales for the next one and so on. It's a rare case where you sell more of set 5 then you sell of set 2. There is a constant reduction and this is kind of typical of LCG's.

CCG's don't function the same way. In fact, when it comes to making a successful CCG, later sets sell more and the audience grows over time and this is a necessity for its survival. That is not the case for LCG's. As the size of the audience can be predicted, so can the production costs and printing costs. With CCG's there is a lot more prospecting which is why games like Destiny, seemingly successful and popular games, still fail.

For example with Star Wars LCG, even though they had what is arguably one of the largest franchises in the business of franchises, its audience was unquestionably one of the smallest of any LCG FFG had put out in the last 10 years. Yet it still survived for 7 years because the audience it did have, continued to buy the game at a relatively steady and predictable rate. Destiny on the other hand, same franchise, a far larger audience swung wildly.