What do you guys think about FFG's approach to balancing the meta with card bans and restrictions in their other Living Card Games?

Will they go the same route solution-wise in Netrunner?

I played all LCG's for a while (CoC & AGoT the most) but I'm honestly not a big fan of their balancing policy. Especially the Restriction Lists become a tedious matter after a while. I would wish that they go a cleaner way in Netrunner. Just ban, if a card is absolutely unbalanced and meta warping. Also, I would welcome more meta-self-regulation and the possible print of specific hate cards as a problem solution, instead of unnecessary rushed bans or restrictions.

What do you guys think?

I am a proponent of meta self-regulation, but in some cases, that may not be viable. Specific hate cards seems to me to be a questionable solution that is likely to cause more problems than it fixes. I think the restricted list is the most elegant balancing method I've come across. It breaks up broken combos and devalues cards by adding an opportunity cost while still allowing players to play with the cards they paid for. Having said that, if everything goes well in the design phase, a restricted list should never be necessary, and it should probably be a while before Netrunner needs any form of external balancing.

A point I forgot to include is the card errata, which FFG often uses as some sort of card balancing too. I'm not a big fan of that one either. It's pretty overwhelming for new players to keep track of all the card changes.

I greatly prefer errata+reprint to banned and restricted lists, though in a game with 3CL, restricted seems simpler. Some cards will inevitably get banned anyway.

I'm not ready to concede that some cards will get banned anyway. In fact, I feel that when a game needs to ban a card - any card - that is a failure on the part of the designers and playtesters. Eratta is fine with me, but I hope IF they have to eratta a card they will let players get a copy of the current wording for free via the Internet and mailing back the incorrect card or cards.

Darik said:

Errata are always available as part of the most current FAQ. As for replacing the changed card, the procedure has always been (to date) to correct it in future printings of the relevant set, which players could repurchase at their leisure. Free replacements would be nice, but have not been done before.

that is a failure on the part of the designers and playtesters

Yes, it most certainly is. A game getting canceled is also a failure on the part of the designers and playtesters. Sometimes you just have to pick the lesser evil.

but I hope IF they have to eratta a card they will let players get a copy of the current wording for free via the Internet and mailing back the incorrect card or cards.

I have never heard of this happening.

In following the CoC balancing, they certainly will use banned and restricted lists, but it can be a reasonably short list of cards on either. Usually when massive balance problems present themselves, they can be traced back to one card, so sometimes the simplest solution is to take one card out of the mix.

But overall, the CoC designers have been using new card releases to try and address broader balance problems. I think that's a great approach, and one that players actually enjoy rather than grumble about. In Netrunner, I suspect most balance issues can be cured through new card releases, as the mechanics of the game don't have windows for the sort of endless recursion strategies that lead to card bans/restrictions in CoC and other deckbuilding games.

I'm not sure of the history of FFGs game balancing. But may I suggest that fixing a card by introducing another creates giant swings which do more to make an unbalanced game even more unbalanced. Sooner than later the game revolves around one card.

Issue #2 Unfortunately there are certain unbalances already in existence. I was hoping that Corps would get a 'buff' in the last data pack but I'm afraid Oversight AI is far from it. Becuase oversight AI requires a click to to have first installed the ICE and again another click to rez it, I'm not confident its slowing the Runner down enough. … its bad enough that the ICE is trashed after it's passed through but now its double bad becuase of the click to play it's operation cost.

I'm not so sure theres a single card thats making the Runner so much stronger but really the combination of cards and there speed. Versus how slow the Corps has to be. I believe the win rate for Runners is about 60% from the current data; that's fairly signifcant.

I'll keep a close eye on how this imbalance swings in the time to come.

**Also note; the game is brilliant when all the factions have the same chances to win/lose. But it will lose some of its flavour if one faction is clearly dominating (similar to HB / Criminal / Noise) who get a majority of play. I realize each faction has its own style and will appeal to certain players.

"Silver bullet" meta requires that the counter card be accessible to all the opposing factions equally, otherwise the balance tips against those that have to trade off to include it. Banning and restriction requires that the 'competitive' player environment be made aware of the card limitations. Nither is ideal and perhaps both need to be considered as options in the designer's toolbox to deal with problem cards.

Problems are almost inevitable, for those who consider it a failure on design and playtest's part - it is impossible to predict the future card pool and so new cards will be introduced that interact with previous cards in unforseen ways. Sometimes this highlights a weakness in the rules that needs clarification, and some times the interaction is so bad that one or the other options above neds to be consiered.

As an aside, you may want to consider playing around with the Oversight AI card. Used correctly, I think it is an excellent accelerator for the Corp.

The solution as to the "Educating the masses" of changes to cards etc, would be to add in/ replace the story in the data pack boxes with the errata sheet.