The following post will contain some negative information about this game's past and is not indicative of its current state of game.

Things that fought UFS's player base:

1.) Naruto became in to existence shortly after this things existence, and people would rather play the TCG that all the other anime fan boys are playing than something genuine and not a summon monster clone.

2.) Raw deal still existed and its base was VERY loyal to the point of people continuing to play it even though it died towards end of year 1.

3.) WoW TCG towards end of first year.

4.) No new major video game releases for its liscences when first released (or even now, though Tekken 6?!)

5.) Rotation being announced 'late' in its existence, and people from non-rotating games mostly populating it.

6.) Promo policy (legal as soon as its released in a tournament scene killed the game for four players locally... wtf. Really? You quit a game over that?).

7.) As Naruto was slowing down Bleach TCG jumps in sometime around year 2 with another slightly less uninspired game mechanics to suppliment the massive amounts of "I play TCGs that have cartoon features on Adult Swim" groupies. This really hurt local player base as both of these TCGs had no announced rotation and had a feeling of being LESS luck based (due to absence of control check).

8.) Company change worried a lot of people.

9.) Tough decks to design. A lot of local players picked this game up and were frustrated by their inability to be able to build "a kick deck" or "viable deck exhuastion strategy with Zengeif" or whatever misc theme. Say like in other TCGs if you just throw a bunch of cards together with the word 'elf' or 'sliver' on them, you have a very viable deck. UFS isn't that nice to your deck building concepts and challenges people to think of a figting strategy. Apparently people don't want that and many of them quit out of frustrating failed attempts at a Ken UR deck made of cards with Ken in the art. ...

10.) Year 2 nats in PA. (not really, but that was pretty crappy I've heard)

11.) Poorly worded / thought out cards in base set 2 requiring banning / massive errata. And also VERY strong cards in base set 1 (Yoga Mastery: this card alone caused 3 players locally to give up hope. Shadow Banishment and Taki UR caused another player to outright quit in the middle of another tournament. In hind sight, these were definitely too strong for such a limited environment of Set 1 and 2.)

12.) Being unlike many other TCGs. This game has a control check for every card you play, and also has no monsters that you summon and force to fight other monsters. People just did not get it.

13.) Smallish base and 3 years old. People will look at that and be like "oh... its one of THOSE games... the soon to be dead games that were only ever mediocre and beloved by a small few people like Lot5R and LotR TCG... yeah that's too clicky I won't be playing THAT game".

Please add to the list. I think this game has a lovely future, however we somehow have to get over / develop a few things.

1.) Hostile threads here towards others and criticizes
2.) More content on main page and fan pages
3.) Promote the game more locally (keep playing it at stores, or new stores. Raid stores that don't carry it with your player base, etc).

Thank you for reading. Please add to list and keep having fun with the game!

Small Fact Check:

Rotation was known about since the start of the game. STG never hid the fact that the game would feature rotation of sets every two years.

[Personal Opinion]

Why I mention this - I don't play games that do rotation normally. Because usually it's mentioned after a certain period of time, and suddenly you get this "aww, crap, I spent all this money on X, and now I'm not going to be able to use it?" Because I knew up front there would be rotation, I was able to do my expenditures on the game accordingly, and anyone that I've ever demo'd the game to, its rotational format has helped a number of players get into the game.

Granted some folks use it as an excuse "I bought all these cards three years ago, from two different sets, and now I don't play the game because they rotated out." If there were 8 sets in existence before Rotation, and you only bought cards from two of those sets, Rotation really isn't the reason you quit.

That aside... and adding to your list:

Moar Content!!! Yes. Forgive me for whoring this up... but Team Canada Online (See link in my Signature) is actually giving away cards including Superares and Promos to folks who submit UFS articles that are published. Content about how to deck build, tournament expereince, and "single card strategies" show that the game is alive and well, and drive interest from casual and hard core players alike.

More deck lists. While one or two players will post their "top X" deck from Major events - nothing grows a meta game like full disclosure of the top decks from an event. Matt Kohls pre-errata, was running his Infiltrating Build. While it hadn't been published, he rolled a number of AoP events. Once it was published, people started figuring out how to beat it.

While it's great to be able to have your Awesome deck that no-one knows exactly how it work, it doesn't grow the game. It keeps it insular and in the hands of a few select people. Yes, we can talk all about how craptacular Net Decking is. At the end of the day, net decking does the following things, which I feel is positive:

• Helps folks who may not be as creative at deck building as others, gain inspiration.
• Helps folks understand what the top decks are, and how to beat them. Which causes the metagame to grow and evolve.

Yes, there is a counter argument that net decking causes all the decks to be the same, but with Diversity there is a safeguard against that.

The top decks from all of Raw Deals major events were posted. This helped the game grow tremendously especially when you saw the discussions that arose as a result of people looking at "How do you beat this deck", and the experimentation that flowed from it.

Something that I feel that should be added to your "List of challenges"

Many UFS players lean on the crutch of "this card should be banned" rather then trying to figure out how to deal with cards. It causes metas to stagnante, because since they know that UFS may eventually ban the card, they just throw their arms up into the air and say "I can't compete with that card. It needs to be banned." Which is causing stagnation in the evolution of the metgame.

[/personal opinion]

vermillian said:

What about Street Fighter 4? Although it is a shame it isn't specificaly licensed in UFS, and we won't have SF sets in a while (total lack of timing IMO here).

UFS has a generic SF license. Meaning that with very little problems they could, if they wanted to, make the next set have SF4 characters (Abel, Rufus, El Fuerte, C. Viper, Seth).

What we do and do not know about the liscencing of UFS properties makes it almost impossible to say if we could release a SFIV set.

Consider perhaps we had SF liscences for all but any new SF#? Consider we had the liscence for everything but it was only a three year contract (would make sense why we have SCIV now.... maybe we won't be seeing any SNK after release 13 or so? interesting to consider). And so on.

So, though it may seem like we had the full SZF liscence, there may have been extenuating circumstances that FFG has not and will not or cannot tell us.

Antigoth said:

So few people actually look at deck lists that, honestly, I'm not even surprised nobody posts their deck lists anymore. I know you did it for the Canadian Nationals '08 and any tournament which you possibly could do it.

I was telling myself : "Gee, I shouldn't really answer this thread since I'm kind of part of the problem." but if it gets people to post deck lists (even in an attempt to make the decks better), I'm all for it. I don't even know what could be done at this point in order to improve that part of creating content. We can't force people to comment on decks, nor can we force people to take comments on decks with a grain of salt if someone words it bad. Personally, I've been avoiding the deckbuilding forums for so long that I honestly have no idea what goes on in there anymore : I got kind of tired to carefully word a decklist and have no comments other than "Run card you clearly obviously don't have or else it'd be in here".

This has been a problem for so long that I've evidently forgotten all about it. It honestly didn't occur to me that deck silence was still going on. Best way to truly take a stance against it would be posting top 8 decks of every event, and posting various decks of the event, those that the one reviewing all decks find interesting or could have taken it if they were optimized. Evidently, Antigoth's done that. I'm not a Scout nor any sort of a good player so I wouldn't really do this myself as I've no real talent to speak of, but it'd at the very least get more decks publicized.

* * *

As far as the rest? Creating more content is something I've been wanting to do, but as I said in the other topic, I'm just a machine that spouts pointless rhetoric and sometimes, some photo manips. Nothing I've ever wrote seriously has been of any value to this community, and comedy has pretty much been deemed valueless by the community at large. For me to actually contribute, one of two things would need to happen : I would need to discover a topic that I can cover better than anyone else (needless to say, I find this pretty unlikely) or I would need to become a better funnyman, using more situational comedy than destructive comedy.

Being more friendly / less negative to various players (HEY LOOK A POINT THAT DIRECTLY ADDRESSES ME AND THOSE OF MY ILK~ WHICH WAS PRECISELY WHY I WANTEDTO IGNORE THIS TOPIC FROM THE GET-GO SINCE THIS IS WHY I'M PART OF THE PROBLEM!) : At this point, what else could you possibly do other than censorship? Obviously you want every part of the community (even those who feel alienated by it) to rise up and participate, which is why I mentioned "other than censorship", which would single out a few people as worthless bums who've nothing worthwhile to say (you may call this hypocritical as I single myself out on this exact subject - This is not the point. I choose to have this reputation in a sense. Others don't.) Self-policing doesn't work, obviously, or else we wouldn't be talking about this right now, and we all know that unless we do something REAL stupid FFG will not intervene. Right now, you're at these crossroads on this subject, and you guys need to figure out where you're going.

Last part of that sentence shifted to the general "you" because I want no parts of THAT discussion. Y'all know what would happen if I did :

I agree with the decklists part, I think if winning decklists were posted it would help a lot of other players see whats working to gain inspiration, as well as force the strong players who build it to change things up and keep the meta evolving through them. I believe in some cases they automatically post top 8 decks in some games. UFS could use something like this

Also one thing I think would help the game is a stronger singles market (or more uncommons in a pack)
I just hate how its impossible for anyone to get certain uncommons from sets without buying a couple boxes. 100+ is a lot for someone who just wants 4 ways of punishment for example and doesnt have that much extra cash.

Honestly I'm probably one of the sorts that falls under number nine, but I think you're /greatly/ understating the fact. It's not 'I want a Ken deck with all Ken cards'. It's not people trying to throw a bunch of cards with 'kick' in the title together, it's more fans of the fighting games who don't want game developers creating sub-par versions of their favorite characters, or not giving them the option to use a different version of their character card to play a different style of game. Too many people get stuck not being able to play characters they like because those characters are either so bad they're a joke, or don't even come close to fitting someone's playstyle. It's a very frustrating situation. I even had my scout 'build' me a block 3 Sakura because I'd exhausted every single idea I had. He made a $200 deck, that was still control and still lost to many aggro decks. That's the frustration that people like you mention in number nine are having with the game. It's that only some symbols get the magic combinations of answers and power cards you need to make a good deck, if you play that symbol without those cards you run into trouble, and STG designed characters with ONE use in mind, and there was ALWAYS a 'best' character for any given symbol/strategy, which may not have lined up with the character you want to play. We'll see how Hata changes things, but honestly, this has been my only gripe with UFS.

I also disagree about your stance on eratta/banning. What you suggest is FAR more hurtful to the game than bannings. There are several cards out right now (let's not get into which. There's probably threads about them already open) that I have playsets of, that I took /great/ effort to get, and in all honesty, if they were banned tomorrow I wouldn't be upset. Sometimes cards are just flat-out too powerful or do something that wasn't intended and need to be banned, not banning them is just going to frustrate more people and make them quit on the grounds that UFS is an imbalanced game. It's not going to stimulate people to think of answers, and even if they find answers, that means that the game will turn into All versus Evil again with different symbols. People will only be able to play the symbols that have answers to common problem cards. Bannings are a good thing.

Lots of thoughts on this here thread.

1. Okay, Drunken Panda here is an example of something that honestly drive me INSANE (no offense). He stated that he had someone build a deck for him with Sakura, and it didn't work. The problem with that is that playing with a deck someone else built is never going to work as well as a deck you built yourself - you don't have the same sense of deck flow with it, even if you know every card in the deck (because you're not the one who decided WHY to put the card in the deck). And the general issue with "this character doesn't work" - it's (mostly) crap. In this game, there's plenty of support to do almost anything you can possibly think of. There have been four released Sakura cards, and two of them are very good (the promo, which, sadly, just rotatated, and the starter, which is stupidly good). Players who complain about X character not being any good...well, I know I'm still waiting on Eagle, and Hatman is waiting on Birdie/Sodom. Who has the more relevant argument?

2. Symbol distribution/X symbol is so overpowered - something else that drives me crazy. Right now, there are only two symbols with a significant difference in power level than the other symbols (Fire and Life), and even then, with a handful of good cards, that can change (Life is very likely to get a huge shot in the arm, methinks). All, Evil, and Order are not on some god tier level - that's utter crap and you know it. They're good, but not so much better than the other symbols that it's an autoloss to not use them. Air, Earth, Chaos, and Water (in particular) all have plenty going for them...but instead people just whine and complain about "OMG it's a good card that has [All, Evil, Order, or some combination thereof] -broken symbol is more broken!". Why not just see it as a good card and mvoe on?

Personal story time: I started this game playing Starter Ukyo. Why? Because I liked his ability. Water was my first symbol, and I stuck with it for the longest time. I only switched because they printed a Geese character card. From there, I went to promo Geese off Evil. Why Evil? Because I liked his ability to change those check numbers and give the damage pump, and guess what? Evil had the best 1-checks at the time. It wasn't until then that I started playing against other people regularly, and dealt with Chain Throw, Absurd, Kunai, Shinobi, etc. And I was like "wow, those are really good cards with Evil on them...maybe they would work for me!" So I picked them up, started using them, etc. And I pulled an **Ibuki** and a Kasumi Suzaku. And I saw it and I thought to myself "WOW! I like that ability! I can destroy my already committed foundations to commit their stuff, and then play this really cool attack that gets cheaper as the turn goes by!". So I got the set of Suzaku's, Kunai, Shinobi (NOT Chain Throw - I only had three), and put together an Ibuki deck. I also added Kubi Ori and KGaki. And they got banned. And I could see why. Big deal.

Then I went to my first big tournament - GCC 2008. And while my then favorite character ever (THE Ukyo) was smashing face in teams (<3), my Ibuki was getting her face pounded. And I learned something - Evil really wasn't my symbol. It was rather boring - an Evil deck could win with any character, with roughly the same decklist. That's no fun. Red Lotus, Syndicate, etc (didn't have Higher Caliburs to use) weren't even printed - Ibuki wasn't broken at all. She wasn't right for me, as much as I liked her (Ukyo, on the other hand, has resource control, so he is very much right for me).

And so I moved to Order when I saw it had a lot of committing and draw effects. And I never looked back. And now I hear crap like "O, another Order player - how original". To that, my response is something I can't say on these forums - it contains many rude comments and swears. I take things like that personally - I arrived at my ultimate conclusion through tirla and error and hard work, not jumping on some bandwagon. You may not respect me (you don't have to), but don't disrespect my intelligence like that.

/story

Moral - put some work in, and you're going to enjoy the game a lot more

3. Kick decks - man, for the longest time I wanted a Kick deck, and someone to print Kim. Well, that's been done, and whiel Kim's not bad, and neither are the Kicks, they're not as good (in my opinion) as Punches and Balrog. But...I really just wanted kick support BECAUSE there was Punch support. Still waiting on good Ranged support, because I loev Dio Cega and Sonic Boom Typhoon.

Conclusion - I really love this game. Anyone who has ever met me or talked to me about UFS can tell you that I really, really love this game; every aspect of it, and even the bad parts (Unique is a keyword ability now? wtf?). I've met a lot of cool people (ATL rawks...but Omar is so NOT cool, with his...his...mustachey thing!), had a lot of fun, and just enjoy hanging out with the players and crap like that. Much as I hated the million hour drive to GenCon, I'm actually considering hopping into the van for Journey's End just for the road warrior stories. Great game, great players - I just want things to continue to be awesome.

I miss George and his 8 copies of Silent Step per Sagat deck. I miss the days when people on the forums GOT ALONG and listened to the rules peeps (granted it was Dave, but still - respect and whatnot). All these things that people complain about, that's "wrong" with the game and makes it "unfun" and "makes people quit" - did you ever stop to think that at least half of these are, in fact, due to how the players themselves act?

Broken cards, huh? I came so very close to getting my ass handed to me yesterday by someone who just started playing last week, using a Legacy Highlander Chun Li against my SR Bison. And he didn't utter one word in complaint the entire time, busted card interactions and all. And HE's not quitting. What does that tell you?

Verm - cosplay again at Worlds. But not Iori this time. Not because it was bad or anything - you've just already done it now xD

Verm, I liked that you included external obstacles that gave the game difficulties, as well as internal.

As Drunken Panda said above, I can't agree with Antigoth's stance on banning. I don't think the problem is that folks rely on banning as a crutch because they don't like finding answers. I think that for certain overly powerful cards, finding answers is not fun, playing those answers is not fun, and the answers usually feel weaker than the problem card they're answering. In other words, it forces non-control players to play control, and even when they do, it feels like they're fighting an uphill struggle. People call for bannings on the cards that make them want to quit the game. (The only reason I never quit was that my playgroup was small enough--2 to 4 casual players--for most of the past year, that we had a gentleman's agreement to not play those problem cards.) Such cards highlight how poorly balanced UFS is compared to Magic. WotC spends TONS of man-hours with multiple experienced designers then multiple experienced developers. They especially compare new cards with previous cards to make sure that new cards don't obsolete previous cards (the way Spike obsoleted Nova's Combo, for instance). I think the (numerous) calls for (multiple) bannings are indicative of a systemic problem with UFS, rather than a problem with just a few poor-sport players.

I also remember things differently regarding rotation. I think rotation is a very good thing, but STG made NO mention of it for the first year to year-and-a-half. (I was in the game since the rules were posted before the PA set was released, but I wasn't a playtester, so maybe there was an early discussion of it in-house that I missed.)It was a pleasant surprise for me.

Now, I REALLY like what Antigoth had to say about posting deck-lists. BUT, it's not enough. If you go to Magic's website, you'll find that they don't just post deck lists. They post winning deck lists, and have a paid member of the magic staff (usually a developer, former developer, or pro with very good writing skills) talk about what was surprising and unsurprising about the deck. They explain innovative combos clearly (without abbreviations). They give players a deeper sense of how the game works, and is working at a top level. (This also forces readers to think at a higher level.) Magic does the same thing with their budget deck-building articles, their drafting articles, and their preview articles.

Now I understand if James doesn't have a lot of time to discuss all of this stuff. I was really psyched to get the little we did in the recent preview. But wouldn't it be nice to have one of James' underlings or developers spend an hour each week talking about these kinds of issues? (Please tell me James has underlings or developers by now. If not, I might cry.)

I also really agree with Verm's and Drunken Panda's number 9 (number 9... number 9... number 9... ahem. Sorry.). And I see it both ways. I've been frustrated at not being able to build viable Kick decks, and not being able to build viable Zangief exhaust (mill) decks, but also at not being able to play a particular player with a particular playstyle with any real efficacy. I understand the need to make characters different, and I think Panda does too--they shouldn't all be able to play exactly the same way, and different versions of a character should have some things, like 2 symbols, in common. But you'd think that with 3 symbols on each character it'd be more possible to make a given character effective in 3 different ways. Instead, some characters just aren't effective, period.

Geese, I think Panda's point above was that it took $200 and a different player (the scout) to finally construct a Sakura deck that played how he liked and WAS effective. It was far better than the previous incarnations Panda had created for less money, and it still wasn't near top tier. A different character would have made all the difference, and it sucks for vidgame fanboys.

Of course, my biggest gripe is number 11. Bad wording and bad design are inexcusable. Compound that with insufficient in-house playtesting (or ignoring comments from volunteer playtesters and/or scouts), and we had a mess. I've definitely seen an improvement in the latest set (not 100% perfect, but significantly more professional), and I like it.

MegaGeese said:

All three things are things that I've never experienced and I've played about the same amount as you, starting to play on the first days of release with the PA Battlepack. The first is easy - Only time I've ever seen the guy on the internet or off (most likely ON because I've never met the guy), he was insulting someone. Great PR he was. The second? NOBODY gets along on forums. Hell, I distinctly recall the "Sagat likes to throw people" era having particularly heated (and somewhat insulting) debates on Yoga Mastery. And the third, people HAD to listen to Dave because he wouldn't exactly answer any clarification questions unless you kissed his ass. Again, I distinctly recall him pretty much saying "It works this way just because." when faced with two contradicting rulings he made.

Also, recall that, back then, we had an appointed moderator which actually did something. Once he left, the chaos crept and rose forward pretty fast, because hey, it wasn't doing any sort of good in the card game so it figured it'd wreck havoc on the forums. You'd think with that bad a foundation base it couldn't do much but hey I guess it did it's lasting impression.

You're right about the players making up the card game. However, looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses really isn't the greatest thing to do either, 'cause the message sent is this : "It used to be awesome. Now it's crap." And we're getting far too much of that each and every time a thread like this pops up.

Also, I would like to say something, this goes out to pretty much to every non-contributor who is complaining right now about the lack of player-created pieces on the Intarwebz : Put some up or shut up. Geese did so. Antigoth is working VERY hard to convince people to do so. Hell, even Steve Horvath encouraged players to immerse themselves in their creative side with the ShadoWar character contest! Honestly, at this point, while there is no other structure established than Team Canada Online for UFS-based writing, there is absolutely no better time to start that UFS blog/writing piece you always wanted to write. I've personally stated my reasons as to why I have yet to do so properly (and likely never will) - there isn't enough interest in stuff I do write. But honestly, the rest of you? How can you properly gauge interest in something you have never done? Again, this goes out to those who've never written anything/podcasted anything (as much as I loathe the podcast in it's current state), and not to those who did and those who continue to do so.

ARMed_PIrate said:

I totally get that. Part of what I'm seeing overall as part of a problem though is that players want to go out, spending $20-$25 on a CCG, and they want a top tier competitive deck. I'm not saying all, but some of the players certainly fall into that. Some people want the card game to play a certain way, and if it doesn't fit into their narrow focus their unhappy about it. Using a quick chess analogy, it's like a player complaining that the Queen is too versatile, and is too free in her movement. So she should be banned.

I get many folks personal preferences. At the same time, step back, and look at the requests for bans. How frequent are they? Often how frivolous are they? The fact that we rarely go a day without someone saying "please ban card X" and the fact that those cards are never the same, and that a player who wants card X banned, thinks card Y is fine, merely because it fits their play style.

Am I saying that the game is perfect? No. But people are far too quick to hit the panic button. The first problem came about with the banning of Fruit F#^ker. While some folks viewed it as an NPE, it was a balancing factor that caused Lost Memories and Yoga Mastery to run amok, when during playtest they were under control.

ARMed_PIrate said:

Do you remember playing with 40 cards decks of magic, where there wasn't a 4 card limit? Do you remember playing initial suicide black where it was Erg Raiders, Hasaran Ogresses, and some Stone Throwing Devils, mixed with some swamps and dark rituals? I sure do. You're comparing a game that grew from small humble beginnings like UFS, and into the monstrosity it has become today. I remember when there were 4 card limits, and I remember playing with 4 Libraries of Alexandrea in the deck. Many of the reasons why newer magic cards don't overpower previous magic cards is because the first incarnations were so powerful that to release even more powerful incarnations would be to wholly unbalance the game. Print a stronger version of Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, or their Ilk? Bad ideas. I played Magic from Beta through Tempest. The game that magic is today, is a far cry from the game that Magic was three years in.

ARMed_PIrate said:

Thanks! and I agree

ARMed_PIrate said:

First and foremost, there seems to be a high degree of apathy amongst UFS players right now. I'm offering to pay people to write articles about UFS. www.teamcanadaonline.net front page
So far, two people have stepped up and written articles, that's it. In Raw Deal, Highlander, and V:TES the players talking about deck tech is huge. The amount of documented information was tremendous. People did it on a voluntary basis - for free. I'm doing everything I can to kick start people into writing. I'm trying to kick people into discussing tech, rather then just complaining. Forgive me, but I'm getting a little frusrated at the apathy that's out there.

Oh... and start crying.

ARMed_PIrate said:

But here's the challenge - Drunk Panda would come on the boards, leave flames, and complaints about how crappy the game was, but wouldn't venture over into the deck discussion areas to try and figure out how to build the deck differently. Could he have done it for less then $200? Possibly.

Too often, everyone is trying to figure out how to build on a budget, in some sort of twisted crippled meta. When you look at a money rich environment like New York where massive playsets and collections are abundant, you seldomly hear people complaining. Am I saying that UFS is a money game? No. In Raw Deal we dropped $300+ on expansions every time, if not more. In UFS, I'm seeing players struggle to spend $75 on an expansion.

When players can't afford to go out and buy basics they're going to have problems. Again, this is what I'm seeing. Experience may differ elsewhere.

Getting back to the question of "character X isn't as good as I think it should be." If every character is as powerful, and everything is fully balanced, the game will be boring, and people will leave. Look at Magic. When they had perfectly balanced, bland sets, sales sucked, and people left the game. For UFS that means that that Utopian dream of a perfect balance is A) Unachieveable B) would doom the game to failure.

It's also unachieveable because what one person consideres balanced, another person think should be banned. (I went there earlier)

I'll be honest, I miss the player bases from Highlander and Raw Deal. I miss the experience, and the willingness to try. I've experienced it in other games, and while I love UFS, look at the top players - how often do they wade in with their thoughts on certain cards, or how to deal with certain situations. By and large - very infrequently. It creates a vacume. If people wonder why there is such a disparity between top players and the rest of the player base, it all boils down to the lack of openness to trying new things.

Anyhow... I'm starting to rant now... so I'm going to shut up, and go and eat dinner. My apologies up front to anyone that I may have offended with my comments and views. What I've written above are my personal views. I do not write them while wearing any sort of an official hat. At the end of the day, please understand that I do love UFS, as a player first and foremost. Often I see what I've enjoyed with other games, and how much fun I've had when those elements were present, and I try to grow them, because I feel it will enhance my enjoyment of the game. The fact that I have friends from Highlander that I haven't actively played in almost 10 years, that I sit down with every year at Gencon, and catch up - UFS has those same possibilites. At the end of the day while we each see different things in the game, and each enjoy different aspects of the game. Just remember you'll catch more with honey then you will with a stick.

Homme Chapeau said:

By the way, something I haven't said to you yet, that I really need to get out there.

As a writer, when you put your mind to it, you write some fantastically solid stuff. I realize you are actually very self depricating, but if you're interested, submit something in writing. If you want, I'm willing to go back and forth with people on how to edit their work to increase the appeal of what they're writing. So if you want an editor who will give you feedback on how to improve what you're writing, I'm willing.

P.S. To everyone - In my experience - people who actively do things to help grow the game, which can include writing articles can get people noticed.

I've seen where players are picked up as playtesters, because their set analysis that they wrote as an article on a fan site board made the developers step up and say "This guy would be really awesome as a playtester."

I think Antigoth got what I was trying to say as a rebuttal to Panda-san, but where I instead veered off topic, he kept going on that track. Bravo, sir!

It seems like so much of the time, people get frustrated with not necessarily being able to figure things out on their own and instead of looking to others for help (in this case, the deckbuilding forum, which is a larger base of possible responses than one person), they just sort of throw up their hands and get mad. Not being able to make something work the way you want it to is frustrating; I've been there. Input from other people equals more perspective, and the more you observe a thing from various angles, the better able you are to understand the real truth of it. Sometimes, even after you put in the work, things still don't add up, even with all your ducks in a row. But...expecting your favorite character to be godly (and then being angry when you think he/she isn't) is silly and counterproductive. Rather than look at it as "X character sucks", look at it from the other side: "with a few cards to do [X], this could really work". Sakura (the starter) certainly isn't crap; so think about what cards can do what you want to do, find them, and then work from there.

Hatman - I actually didn't get "into" the game until set 7 (Darkstalkers). I'd juts picked up some SNK stuff from its first release and went from there. But you do also have a point - fond reminiscing on my part won't fix things. But at the same time - isn't it also said that history repeats itself? Learn from everything, mistakes and successes, and you're on the road to improvement. There must be a way to make it work.

There's something I'm forgetting to say here. It took me 20 minutes to let me type this out between my computer acting up and thinking out the right words to use. Gah.

O, and Brian - I'd always planned on doing that for Set 11, but never got around to it. However, I think I *will* do one for Set 12. New base set, new slate, and all that jazz. START OVER / BEGIN ANEW =O

Antigoth said:

I'll second this. Hatman, your card of the day/week/whatever articles on UFS Cards were the things I enjoyed reading the most on that site. You're one of the funniest writers in the UFS community, and with some additional editing, your articles would be top notch.

TANGENT: Along with needing more writing, UFS articles of the preview variety (and a few of the card of the day variety) from all writers could improve in one very specific way:

Almost every single UFS Cards preview article that I encountered had a sentence along the lines of, "But what really makes or breaks a card are the abilities, so let's take a look at them now." Reading some version of that line over and over gets really old really fast. Whenever you're writing for an audience, keep that audience in mind; if what you're saying will be obvious to the audience, don't say it. (Abbreviations are not obvious, and full card names should always be used; links to images are even better. The fact that abilities can make or break cards is obvious, and doesn't need to be stated.) What the heck, while I'm on a roll, here are a few more stylistic pointers for aspiring card writers...

For discussing abilities, the lead-in should say something about the abilities. You might present an ability (or start the paragraph on the ability, if a full-size card pic is already posted) with something like, "The first ability, while short, is deceptively powerful," or, "At first glance, the Enhance seems like a weaker version of the Enhance found on Whereabouts Unknown," or, "The second ability will trigger frequently, and warrants further analysis." In short, make sure every phrase and sentence counts. There should be no filler.

Phrases like, "Let's look at..." aren't really necessary. They set up a more conversational tone, but for an article in a jounalistic style, it's usually better to stick to the facts or (for an editorial-style article) your opinions.

Stats don't usually warrant more than a sentence or two. A paragraph (with the exception of something controversial, like Feline Spike's balance) is overkill. For a foundation, it's enough to say something like, "The stats--1/6 with a +2 low block--are impressive," or "At 1/5 it's solid and spammable, which is especially nice for some of these symbols. However, the lack of a block means the stats alone aren't enough to warrant inclusion in a deck." (And that last example is probably wordier than necessary.)

MegaGeese said:

If, indeed, the problem was that easily solved we wouldn't have it. The problem is : "Are the people using the resources available to them?" Obviously, that isn't the case : A bad example, but one anyway, I'm not even using the deckbuilding forums. They still carry the stigma of uselessness from way way back, and last I checked, they were still useless. In order to get constructive criticism on your decks, there needs to be comments on them. People post their deck hoping to get a comment, see nobody's posting, then stop going to the DB forums. This, in turn, keeps new blood from the DB forums, and pretty much does a disservice to the game as a whole. To be fair, though, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one we can actually reverse. The problem is getting involved. Again, a bad example : How much time do I spend on the forums per day? (I'm talking actual time, as otherwise, the fact that my computer is open 16 hours a day with browser open to these forums is kind of cheating) Sad to say it's way too much than anyone should. How many times do I visit the DB forums? Never. Imagine how much more discussion there could be if I took one visit per day to those forums?

Now take that number, multiply it by the amount of users who are always on here. That's a whole lotta posts on a part of the forum that's been dead to me for over a year. Enough to say, foster more discussion and tech talk. Perhaps even rousing the fire lying inside some lurkers.

Forgive me, I guess I was dreaming back there.

MegaGeese said:

Hence why I mentioned rose-tinted glasses. There were problems back then. To blindly ignore them would be doing us all a disservice. That doesn't mean we should never look to the past either. Just that we need to remember things weren't all that great. Honestly, I'm far more hopeful for the future at this particular point in time than last year (keep in mind, at this time, last year, Set 8 had rolled out and we were pretty much smack dab in Ibuki domination). As far as a way to make it work - there probably is. What, though, could make it work? Having more fan-written creations could be a start, but you have to rekindle the interest of the playerbase in reading about UFS with an open mind rather than internet memes. Again, hypocrisy here as I'm one of the biggest offenders, but still.

Funny that, we're off the heels of a great set (if a bit boring when it comes to certain new mechanics), we just got hit by an awesome preview... and we're facing these problems.

Hey AP...

I realize that your tangent is just under 400 words, but I could very easily see you adding in some background, and being able to expand your tangent into about 800 words. Want to take a crack at that and submit it as an article? I would love to actually have a style guide to writing CCG articles.

Just a random thought.

Antigoth said:

Of course, this is based on hearsay, and my own thoughts on how to promote the game among the population of willing but unrecruited college students around here. That said, it certainly seems like an easy trap to fall into -- tell people, "You can sink $20 into this game, and beat anyone as long as you have enough heart!" or whatever permutation thereof you wish to offer, and they'll think, "Hey sure, I'll give this game a shot, and win some easy prize money too!" and become a loyal member of your playgroup... or they start losing, and quit the game in a fit. (Just curious -- has this ever happened with anyone?)

If this is all old news to everyone, great, that means I'm probably pretty close to the facts, and I've never done any TCG recruiting/promoting before

Biggest problem with UFS is the charcter cards don't reflect well with the videogame charcters. Ryu & M. Bison shouldn't suck. Likewise Dhalsim & Elena should suck! How come Ryu hasn't had any strong charcters based on Ranged attacks? Why is Kasumi Suzuku 10 dmg(Ibuki's weakest super) while Ry's Shin Shoryuken is 8 dmg(takes triple the dmg as Suzuku in SF3)... Also the charcters are not personalized to there support. How the hell is Chun Li doing a Feline Spike??? Think about it. If only Dhalsim could use Yoga Mastery, would you have heard so much "omg its sooo broken" type comments? Its funny that Naruto TCG was brought up cause the mechanics ain't **** to UFS. But what it does almost perfectly right is personilize the charcters signture moves. Something UFS REALLY needs. In Naruto TCG you can never pull off a 8 Trigrams 64 Palms with Sasuke! So why the hell am I Tira doing a Psycho Crusher??? Its retarded. 90% of people I try to get into UFS expect to take there favorite charcter and use there support cards. Once they see the only way to compete with a Akuma deck is with Dhalsim, Nightmare, Chun Li etc.. support(just an example). They turn away. My first UFS deck was like 80% M. Bison. Psycho Power Punch x4, Psycho Crusher x4, Devil Reverse x4, Knee Press Nightmare x4, Megalomania, Attack Me If You Dare, I Will Crush You, Psycho Power, Demon Eyes... I think you get the point. The deck sucked!

UFS should have a bunch of generic attacks and stuff for anyone to use and keep every charcters support exclusive to them. I bet you won"t see the same ol Evil deck time and time again anymore!

Sorry but no as a former Naruto player(and fan of the manga) I can without a doubt say that will some jutsu can only be played by thier character specific people for the most part they can be played by anyone...Rock Lee can use a Shadow Clone Jutsu or a Fireball Jutsu even though in the show he couldn't do ANY jutsu..

Sol Badguy said:

Theres only 1 fireball jutsu anyone can use it just came out. The rest are Chunin and highter rank. And Shadow Clone is a jutsu any ninja with the skill can use its no reason to restrict it. You tried to be overly technical and failed. Every charcters signture moves that you've only seen them preform on the show is exclusive to them. Can Sakura use Sharaingan Eye? Can Neji use Resengan?? Can TenTen use Chidori??? I think I've made my point..

Btw I said almost perfectly done...

Immortal-JyNxX said:

This isn't the place for this arguement but actually there are 3 Fireball jutsu that came out that anyone can use...The first one was in the very first set..

Regardless of whether or not you are me are correct the chracter specific cards rarely ever se play. That would be because they are chracter specific. same reason that UFS doesn't want to make soo many of them and I think it's cool.

Also if you want to be techincal Feline Spike should be playable by everyone because it is not an attack that only felicia does. In fact I have no clue where that Attack even came from. it is not one of her finshers or even one of her regular attacks. Therefor it should be playable by Chun li and there is nothing wrong with that.

Sol Badguy said:

I'm not saying you can't think its cool. I'm saying in my opinion its turns away more players than it brings in. Just today I was playing UFS for the first time in ages. Magnus the guy I was playing had Juli and attacked with Kazuya Reppa. I hear "how does Juli play Ken's attack?" We go on to explain the game and all 6 people there that never heard of UFS before went on to agree with each other that while the mecanics are solid its just plain stupid for any charcter to use other charecters special moves. They got the biggest laugh when someone asked "so Voldo can use a hadoken?" Also Feline Spike is Falicia's supermove. I don't play darkstalkers much but I'm 100% sure thats her super in Darkstalkers 3! The normal punches and kicks are fine but charcter special moves and super moves should be all charcter specific.. James Hatta has even been moving in that direction giving more attacks charcter specific E's like "Chun Li Multiple 3" or "Balrog Powerful 2." If these incentives continue we might see the day when a charcter like Ibuki can't just dominate the game. Imagine how different the playing field would have been if Chain Throws E was Cody only? Or if Feline Spike was Felicia Multiple 2?

I guess what I'm saying is UFS claim is to have a CCG that gives you the feel of a Fighter. Thats impossible as long as my Evil Cody deck runs almost identical to your Evil Zi Mei. What seperates characters in fighters are their different movesets. If SF4 had someone chose a charcter like E.Honda. Then choose their moveset from everyones move like yea I'll give E. Honda Sonic Boom, Shoryuken, Yoga Teleport & Tiger Knee... I quickly would SF4 fail?

Immortal-JyNxX said:

Yeah I think you kinda lost any sort of credibility right after that.

I don't agree at all.

More Character Only would make every character play much differently from each other, but a question: Where do we put these Character Only cards? In the UR slots -- then we see something like Extreme Rivals {where one character has a stronger finisher than others, and so sees far more play and has a much longer lasting presence in the meta than other characters}, and encourage stagnation in deckbuilding {Character Only means fewer decks can be built; once those decks have played some games, unless the balance is superb, then it will likely be clear which are stronger}. In the commons -- then people will struggle to finish sets of the basic cards they need -- the vanilla attacks that go with anyone.

If the game were well-balanced in the first place, then the band-aid of Character Only wouldn't be necessary. @Voldo can hadoken -- and Balrog can use kicks, Kim punches, Mai attacks that don't cause her boobs to bounce all over the place, <any SF character> weapons... it's a big part of the game to be able to crossover like that. Instead of laughing that Voldo can hadoken, ask "Who would win, James Hata with Sakura's kicks or Hugo with Huitzil's lazor?"