Great news! Just what the game needs at this time. Now we will hopefully see some diversification within each Clan and some more interesting archetypes appearing in the environment.
Just a question: does this mean that the 'Favour of clan x' cards are now legal too? I'm guessing it does. If so then this may potentially have a huge impact on deck construction.
4 hours ago, The Steel Unicorn said:Just a question: does this mean that the 'Favour of clan x' cards are now legal too? I'm guessing it does. If so then this may potentially have a huge impact on deck construction.
If you mean the Support of X, they haave always been legal...
16 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:What about if they introduced Elemental Hatamotos?
An interesting notion. Maybe an Elemental Master role? Top of each Elemental at the event gets the title. Get something special if you manage to achieve all 5 over a season?
Of course, FFG have struggled with the basics of the Hatamoto system (looks to the FFG website), so maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up.
On 11/12/2019 at 11:49 AM, Eisenmerc said:You'd think something this big would merit a post on the main page. I know FFG can be slow with updates but some official word for those of us not at worlds would be nice.
If I were to guess, they probably have to go through and update all the OP documents and websites for the change.
And while they're updating the documents, they might as well compile and put in any extra FAQ entries they might need just so they don't have to update it again later. Wouldn't be surprised if we see something this week or early next week.
Yeah this change doesnt have and air of having been planned and prepared for
23 hours ago, RafaelNN said:If you mean the Support of X, they haave always been legal...
Okay... but they would have had to replace the tourney legal Keeper/ Seeker roles, right?
1 hour ago, The Steel Unicorn said:Okay... but they would have had to replace the tourney legal Keeper/ Seeker roles, right?
The two current elemental roles of your clan or support of the X were the legal choices for tournaments
Speaking of which, the article went up. There's a link to the new Imperial Law as well with the role change too.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/11/15/warriors-of-steel/
I think the more concerning issue is how in the Fu-Leng is there not a new tread from Fro Ttop and TJTP about this yet?
Are they OK? I mean I get that one of them got married and two others were commentating at worlds, but, they have been on the #freetheroles train for a long time now and now that it's pulled into the station, I'd expect them to be popping Champaign bottles in the dining car or something.
21 hours ago, PMAvers said:Speaking of which, the article went up. There's a link to the new Imperial Law as well with the role change too.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/11/15/warriors-of-steel/
The article said the link goes to the place where "Roles are freed" should be written, but the pdf has no mention at all of it. What I am missing?
It's a bit weird, but the previous Roles section was basically a deck restriction for deck-building like how the Restricted List is. By removing it completely, it's no longer something you have to worry about.
I probably would've had a blue footnote in there *mentioning* that the restriction has been removed... but they might have run out of space and wanted to keep it to just be a page.
Anyone knows if this will last for four months (given it was a players choice) or will it be permanent?
6 hours ago, RafaelNN said:Anyone knows if this will last for four months (given it was a players choice) or will it be permanent?
I expect this to last until the next Worlds, where Tyler will ask the Top of Clans again if they want to keep the roles freed. It will be a formality, sort of like how the Tortoise Clan Champion always offers his seppuku to a new Emperor for violating the law on gaijin contact and the Emperor always absolves him.
I'd be very interested to see what the result would be if voting among the top of clans was done as a secret ballot instead (each player simply marks yes or no with no identifying features on the votes). Remove peer pressure and coercion if you want a fair vote.
Note I'm fine with the Roles being freed, but intensely dislike the manner that it was done - it seems pretty obvious with the Roles ceremony being absent from the schedule/description and the stone versions of the Roles not actually at Worlds that the decision was made beforehand. Just announce that rather than use the ToCs as a scapegoat in case things go wrong.
7 hours ago, Hinomura said:I'd be very interested to see what the result would be if voting among the top of clans was done as a secret ballot instead (each player simply marks yes or no with no identifying features on the votes). Remove peer pressure and coercion if you want a fair vote.
Note I'm fine with the Roles being freed, but intensely dislike the manner that it was done - it seems pretty obvious with the Roles ceremony being absent from the schedule/description and the stone versions of the Roles not actually at Worlds that the decision was made beforehand. Just announce that rather than use the ToCs as a scapegoat in case things go wrong.
I agree that there should have been a ballot - only democratic after all
But I'm struggling to think of what could go wrong with the decision. I'm assuming that the game was designed/ playtested etc. without locked roles to start with of course and that if it wasn't the option wouldn't have been on the table at all!
Oh, you sweet summer child.
6 hours ago, The Steel Unicorn said:I agree that there should have been a ballot - only democratic after all
The game was originally play tested as clans would only have access to a particular role for a year and then would rotate off it and that no two clans would ever have the same role at the same time or for more then a year. Sadly since then we've seen a fair amount of tinkering (first going to two active roles per clan, and adding that multiple clans can have the same role which culminated in the silliness of our last round of voting where every clan took either an Earth or Air roles). The roles cards were thus super pushed effects to entice players to select that role over others and foster competition for those roles against other clans.
Open roles will be fine if they can balance the inherent relative strength of the role locked cards (something which I don't think they have done yet) but it will likely require some errata to a few of the more pushed effects like Fight On, Forebearer's Echos, Backhanded Complement, Earth Becomes Sky, and Mark of Shame as the worst offenders .
While I can appreciate the desire to remove peer pressure from the equation as much as possible, it's important to also keep in mind that the *whole point* of the role choice at worlds is for the top of clan players to represent their peers. While they did in fact earn their right to make that choice, it doesn't mean they are (or should be, in my opinion) consequence-free for making a choice that goes against what their clan wants.
1 hour ago, Kaito Kikaze said:While I can appreciate the desire to remove peer pressure from the equation as much as possible, it's important to also keep in mind that the *whole point* of the role choice at worlds is for the top of clan players to represent their peers. While they did in fact earn their right to make that choice, it doesn't mean they are (or should be, in my opinion) consequence-free for making a choice that goes against what their clan wants.
I've seen what happens when people are upset at the choice that is made, and I'm sure neither you or FFG intend to be advocating bullying, but the "consequences" from upset people for a choice in a game is just bullying. The negative reaction to the Scorpion choice at Worlds 2017 ranged from passive-aggressive to flat out aggressive, and none of it was acceptable or should be encouraged. The reality that the people attacking Mark for his choice were both factually and morally wrong seemed to matter not at all to FFG, as comments from the Design Team said they like seeing the community reaction to the Scorpion choice.
That's the whole point? Citation needed, please - that's not an interpretation of the Roles choice that I'm familiar with.
It's pretty safe to assume all ToCs have, since the very first Role Ceremony, picked with the best interests of their chosen clan in mind - there has yet to be any kind of troll pick. There absolutely were players among the ToCs at Worlds this year that would have preferred to keep the Roles, but by conducting the vote in public (and stating it had to be unanimous to pass), it removed their ability to make the choice they wanted to make. Instead, they were bullied into a different outcome, which was absolutely unfair to the players involved.
As I've said before, I'm ultimately on board with the decision, and I think it will prove to be beneficial to the game as a whole. There's just so many better ways it could have gone down - if the system wasn't working, FFG should have owned up to that and made the decision themselves, or if they wanted a democratic vote, they should have just required a majority to let it pass... handily there was an odd number of voters.
3 minutes ago, Hinomura said:That's the whole point? Citation needed, please - that's not an interpretation of the Roles choice that I'm familiar with.
It's pretty safe to assume all ToCs have, since the very first Role Ceremony, picked with the best interests of their chosen clan in mind - there has yet to be any kind of troll pick. There absolutely were players among the ToCs at Worlds this year that would have preferred to keep the Roles, but by conducting the vote in public (and stating it had to be unanimous to pass), it removed their ability to make the choice they wanted to make. Instead, they were bullied into a different outcome, which was absolutely unfair to the players involved.
As I've said before, I'm ultimately on board with the decision, and I think it will prove to be beneficial to the game as a whole. There's just so many better ways it could have gone down - if the system wasn't working, FFG should have owned up to that and made the decision themselves, or if they wanted a democratic vote, they should have just required a majority to let it pass... handily there was an odd number of voters.
There have been 2 role ceremonies so far (2019 doesn't count) and there were plenty of accusations of trolling or potential trolling both times. The 2017 Scorpion pick was considered by many to be a troll choice to keep the Scorpion clan down and unable to use Backhanded Compliment from what the responsible person said (it turns out that role choice was still very good for the Scorpion, very Scorpion move). The 2018 Shogun chose in a way to ensure that Crab would be able to secure Keeper of Water since he knew that a particular person picking after him had said he would pick KoW to spite the Crab players if he wasn't able to secure his first preference.
I'm definitely willing to bet I know more about what happened with the 2017 Scorpion pick than anyone else, dude.
31 minutes ago, Hinomura said:I'm definitely willing to bet I know more about what happened with the 2017 Scorpion pick than anyone else, dude.
I know, I was speaking mainly for the benefit of others following the conversation in the first instance. I doubt many outside the Crab clan knew or were aware of the second.
I think it still deviates somewaht from the point I was trying to make, which is this: it's possible for players to want what's best for their clan/the game AND be in favour of Role locking, but the way the situation was handled at Worlds made it almost impossible for a player to express that without facing anger and condemnations.
22 minutes ago, Hinomura said:I think it still deviates somewaht from the point I was trying to make, which is this: it's possible for players to want what's best for their clan/the game AND be in favour of Role locking, but the way the situation was handled at Worlds made it almost impossible for a player to express that without facing anger and condemnations.
My apologies, I did miss your point in this regard.
I completely agree with you here.