I started reading the Call of Cthulhu LCG forum to get some news and opinions about the COC Core Set. There is a huge wave of criticism going on from old players leaving the game (many of them were playtesting the new cards and their feedback was ignored; the COC CS is just reprints with no errata included and more).

I am not that familiar with FFG people, but is the Nate guy, they criticise, Nate French responsible for AGOT also?

Here's the link:

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=35&efcid=4&efidt=32784

new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

interesting reading on teh Cthulhu thread - and it looks like those players are pretty bitter. My condolences.

As far as I am concerned though, I am very confident in Nate's abilities. I like the Chapter Packs, I like the summer/winter mechanic and i love the Core set. I like the League play, i like that players and torunaments will have an effect on the development of the game and I am confident that once we get through this transition pahse to LCG everyhting will be better. Our meta has found a way to play competitive events while we move thorugh this stage, and by next summer, when the card pool can really support LCG competitive events - I think things will be just fine.

I think we are in good hands and that things will be better than right now. Different from what it was, but better than where we are.

More than likely, yes. Nate French is the Line Developer for GoT, CoC and I also think Mutant Chronicles.

Bear in mind you have to take alot of this criticism with a grain of salt. The LCG format is something completely new for gaming (though some may argue that Deadlands tried it first). FFG is attempting to create a new type of gaming experience using games that had already been established as ccgs. The switch to a monthly release of new, fixed product is going to take some getting used to. Also, FFG is trying to get new players into playing these games. This is a major reason for card reprints in the Core Sets: take existing cards that they know interact well with each other, and get them into the hands of new players.Established players are, of course, going to be upset. In our local GoT meta, we still play "standard" format events, even though the format itself doesn't exist in any official way. Other metas play their own home-brewed formats. But I still pick and all the new expansions, and am looking forward to the new league. I built my first LCG only deck (and intend to start a thread on this later), and I know it needs work, and the card pool is currently very lacking, but I feel that the over-arcing concept of the LCG will fix all this.

Also, with the change in format to the CoC game, I actually plan on picking this one up as well and starting to play it. I picked up some of the cheap boxes of CoC during the FFG Holiday Sale, and am really looking forward to playing the game. The switch to LCG format actually makes it possible for me to play both games, and I no longer will spend large amounts of money on one particular game.

We're lost lots of older, established players of GoT thanks to the LCG format. I can understand their frustrations, but I think they are missing what is truly happening here. The game is changing, evolving, and had the game started out this way I wonder how many of them would have tried it and never found a problem with the format? I bet most of them would at least have tried it, since it seems that alot of people who play GoT got into it from the books. And at our store alot of people have picked it up since the LCG change just because they no longer have to spend money chasing rares to be competitive.

Sure, neither game is what it was back in the ccg format days, but that doesn't mean either game is not worth playing. As for me, I have alot of respect for Nate, and consider him a friend, and look forward to what these two games are going to bring to my gaming experience over the years to come.

Max Wax said:

In all fairness, before asking if the same guy is in charge and questioning whether or not the game is in good hands, you need to ask if the AGoT CS suffers from the same criticisms. Are AGoT playtesters coming forward and saying their feedback was ignored (and remember, there is a difference between feedback being "ignored" and "not to act upon")? Are people upset with the reprints and modified reprints in the AGoT CS? Doesn't seem so to me, so while I feel for the CoC crowd, the experience doesn't seem to be equal among all games Nate leads design for.

Granted, a good chunk of the old CCG players have left AGoT. But their reasons seem to be more about support, organized play, regular release schedules and FFGs tendency to run into frequent "unforeseen problems" related to getting this game into the hands of players. The "early rotation" seemed to be the straw that broke the back of the majority of AGoT CCG players, not the Core Set or its contents. It seems to me that if AGoT is in "bad hands" at FFG, it's more likely related to distribution and support. And Nate French isn't responsible for any of that.

As I said I do not know people working for FFG, and never had a chance to meet them. I was just curious, if it is the same guy responsible for both lines, A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu LCG. I think with the new starting point for both games, there was a lot of strange moves made and some mistakes too. Obviously that makes me think why and who is responsible for that. The whole experience with the LCG products made me question FFG as a whole, their reliability, customer service-distribution, attitude, etc.

Max Wax said:

Makes sense, and you're certainly not alone in that. There is a lot that seems strange and even wrong from our (the players') point-of-view. The observation I was trying to make was that the person vilified on the CoC boards (Nate) is not necessarily the person responsible for the decisions that have given rise to questions and complaints over in AGoT-ville.

As the lead designer and developer, Nate is responsible for the direction of both games when it comes to the play experience. New mechanics, deck themes, card abilities, all of that. CoC's primary complaint (at least on the thread you link to) is all about those kinds of things. They're not upset about a transition to a fixed format (they've had one of those for a couple years now). They're upset because the cards that are coming out don't jive with the way they envision or like to play the game. So that's all design stuff and a conversation between Nate and the CoC-community. Our primary complaints over on the AGoT boards, recently, have been about availability (a Core Set and CPs that were supposed to be available in September didn't ship until late November), organized play (the sudden elimination of the "standard" format from formal, supported play) and the like. These decisions are well outside of Nate's design and development responsibilities. So while there are some legitimate questions about what kind of hands and attitudes are guiding the game at FFG, Nate is probably not the name associated with the AGoT-community's FFG-related woes. Heck, even the absence of a "relaunch" vehicle for Greyjoy and Martell is probably an executive/business decision rather than a design/development decision.

Now, that said, I know that there were some design, development and direction questions on the AGoT side that parallel some of the things the CoC-community is talking about. Remember the discussion on the old boards about breadth and depth in play experience? The observations last spring that most deck-strategies could be anticipated by the House card, even though there were many cards that could fit into it? In a nutshell, the stuff last summer about "why does Stark always kill, Lanni always kneel, Targ always burn, etc."? These things fed into some comments back then that parallel CoC's comments about the "dumbing down" their game. Those would be design questions for Nate related to our game, but they seem to have gone away from the boards.

i am involved in both games, so i can say, that there is a big difference in how things are handled in AGOT compared to COC. we know, that nate was an AGOT player before his employment at FFG, so naturally he is much more into this game than any other.

also, if oyu have read the COC thread carefully, you will have noticed, that there a lot of personal matters, especially last years world, where a player (the later champ) was caught stacking his deck, and this sort of cheating was not acted upon by nate.

i wont take part in any public discussion, cause thats something that wont ever be fair (not knowing reasons behind, getting infos only from a second or third hand ...), still one thing i really do not understand about the COC coreset: why did they reprint cards and NOT correct errata???

I'm leaving CoC as well, but more for the fact I prefer Agot...So, what I'm going to write, is not full of hate or something. It's just what I honestly think (and live, cause, actually, I'm still a CoC player and I've been there for a couple of years.

Most of Ron's and Jon's concerns in CoC Forums are "game centered". They are great players, with the gift of "total understanding of the game". Ron and his meta created the most powerful decks I remember and that I read of. Jon did something like that.

And others as well...

The fact is that the LCG stuff in CoC (in exception of the first 2 AP's, the CoC chapter packs) have no depth and insight in game mechanics terms. It's like the game is getting simplier and empty.

In Agot, IMHO, we have a funny card pool (I like CP's and Core Set) and LCG is going to be great. In CoC, the transformation from the old game to the new game has been TOO strong.

Tryn' to fix the biggest game bugs, or at least the drawbacks I define bugs (it's too fast, at first), game developers got confused, in my opinion, and created weird cards, more for casual gamers than for everyone else. No fine interactions, no enjoying new mechanics (the well known POLAR mechanics is not getting any credit and it's not well thought), no new funny cards. Just NEW stuff.

It's like they're creating cards without tryin' them. There's no insight in the development and believe me, is frustrating for someone who really loves the game.

We were trained to play funny decks, weird interactions, nice combos.

Now, we have a bunch of reprints (The CORE SET) and some AP's with no themes, no interactions.

We lost the flavour of the challenge in deckbuilding. Everyone who picks up the cards has just to put cards together and play. That's not good for casual too.

I like the fact that these new format allows boardgamers or casual players to have acces to the game without troubles, but FFG should think about another fact: this is a card game, followed by card gamers. And Cardgamers have different necessities from boardgamers. THey HAVE to take care of NEW players, but they CAN'T forget old players.

I Like the LCG environment. It gave my meta new players and it gives the chance to have a lot of fun without expending a lot of money.

But the developement should be deep and well thought. In AGOT LCG I found at least 3 or 4 decks full of interactions that can be lot of fun, the Summer/Winter thing is a great mechanic in this format (i'll talk about the Winter Stark deck that my meta is working on) and even if we talked a lot about unbalancing, the balancing is going to come with new expansion.

CoC is just "going on".

They've not released any information about a CoC LCG only format, but it's going to happen very soon, and that will be the death of the deep and wonderful game we used to know.

...and if an Highlander format is going to take place in CoC (remember that I like that format a lot anyway), it's going to be not that playable, especially for the resource mechanic that is the strongest point in that game.

In the end, the big criticism and pain, comes from the fact that the old players, or new players who love a deep game full of synergies to discover (as I am) will never accept a new game that the only thing that shares with the game they used to love is the NAME.

Sorry if I wrote a lot, but this thoughts should be written and discussed, at least for a deeper understanding of this "time of change" of our favourite games.

DB

I have to say that the decision to move CoC to the LCG format has prompted me to give the game a try. In fact, I even picked up several boxes on the Holiday Sale for our store so that people could get a feel for the game, and we could determine if we all wanted to play it.

I'm sure to a seasoned player, the "dumbing down" of the Core Set is a bad thing, but after cracking open lots of booster packs, I'm at quite a loss as to how to build my deck. There are alot of options there, so its going to take lots of trial and error to get it right.

If the Core Set is as dumbed down as you say it is, it might actually make things easier for me to get a handle on deck design and construction. I can focus on the factions I want to play, and enhance them as the Asylum Packs come out. I completely understand the frustration older gamers have with the change -- there is a similar feel in the GoT Core Set as well. But for a starting off point for new players, this might actually make the most sense.

What I've played of CoC I really enjoy, so I look forward to the new LCG format. And considering our store could hardly sell CoC before (we carried it minimally, and cleranced out everything we had two years ago due to lack of sales), the new format seems to get people interested in playing the game. And that,ultimately, is what I think FFG wants from the LCG format. New players, and a revived community. Sure, some folks will leave, but if enough stay and enough join in the game will continue.

Funny that I got that kind of impression that LCG AGOT is developed by people (Nate) that know and "dig" the game better, compared to COC. All the changes to Call of Cthulhu made me stop buying its Asylum Packs and I ordered one COC Core Set only. Simply speaking I like better white bordered AGOT cards compared to the new COC LCG cards.

In general I have much bigger acceptance of changes in AGOT, than COC.

I found this pretty interesting.

Mind you, this was written a long time ago, and I'm sure things have changed a lot, but I thought it was interesting to read in light of the discussions happening on the Cthulhu forum.

Poor COC...seems like it can never get a break, able to rest in a place where the game mechanics are matched with a balanced yet diverse card pool. Here's to hoping that the LCG format will change this.

I've ordered my three copies of the COC core set. I'm not a competitive player, but I do hope to be able to make some creative decks. The thread over on the other forum has scared me, but I also take it with a grain of salt.

jl_zao said:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange æons, even death may die."

About the discussion, i wouldn´t blame it all on Nate, as far as i know he did an excellent job for AGOT and the few Cuthulu cards i saw and games i played i also got that the feeling that the COC game had at least a fitting design for the Cuthulu mythos. People seem to see things through rose coloured glasses when it comes to discussions about the game status the lead designer is the the one who´s guilty, when it comes to soccer discussions it´s always the trainer... meh, sorry i don´t like the personal attacks against Nate, but i can understand that the players are disillusioned by the fact that known misprints are not corrected, which isn´t really a good argument to purchase the product.

First off, I'm completely ignorant about CoC's situation.

As for AGoT, Nate is the perfect person to run this game. I don't want to speak for him, but I'm sure he loves AGoT, and has plenty of new ideas for it. The problem is that the game has changed for him as much as it has for us in the past year. Can you introduce new mechanics into a LCG the same way you would for a CCG? What about developing house themes? These are are subtle changes I'm sure Nate has had to think about and will adjust to over time. Of course there's room to improve, but I think he's done a fine job.

IMHO, I really think FFG handcuffed Nate by dropping ITE and 5KE at the last second. What appear to be poorly designed cards to many of the new people picking up the game are actually cards that work well in the enviroment they were designed for.

Once Nate and the design process can catch up to FFG's decisions, things should end up just fine.

Deathjester26 said:

Heck, a Legacy pack of about 20-25 (individual) cards would "catch up" a lot of those design inconsistencies.

Would probably be easier to make it 40 cards so that it's the same size as the Chapter Packs. (I'm thinking 40 individual cards, however). With the right choices, quite a lot could be done with that, though ideally, my reprint pack would be more along the lines of 80-100 cards.

As for Nate's abilities, I think that the design of AGOT has done perfectly well under Nate. There's been a few cards that were a bit too much, a few that weren't nearly enough, but that's pretty much par for the course in a card game. The real problems have been with distribution and organization, two things that I think Nate probably doesn't have much to do with as he's designing for 3 (at least) games.

With CoC, I can see that the cards aren't quite up to the same level that Eric's cards were. I'll blame that mostly on Nate still being stuck in an AGOT mindset. As a player of each, I can see that his CoC cards are pretty heavily influenced by AGOT design. While crossover effects and ideas were certainly noticeable under Eric, I'll admit that Nate probably needs to delve into CoC a bit more to be able to come at it from it's own perspective as well. That being sad, I don't think he's done a bad job, simply the expected job given his personal background. Hopefully this next batch of Asylum packs will show some growth as a CoC designer and player.