PierceSternum

I loved Mechwarrior2 on PC. Played it and netmech for years.

I did not like Mech3 demo's so I did not buy it.

I do not feel like I rage quit Mechwarrior.

But I did explain all the things I did not like about it regularly at their old forums. Actually, a number of us did. (My old clan. I guess we were negative vibes...)

And Mech4 EXCEEDED our hopes and we played THAT for years.

Tomato, tomato.

The number of rules on a card has nothing to do with the skill necessary to be good at the game, so I wish that people would stop saying that M2E is less skill.

The game "Go" has exactly ONE thing that can be done for each stone and I defy anyone to claim that game does not take more skill than just about any game on the planet to be great at.

Please throw "skill" out of the arguments. Its not about that.

If I read the M1E folks right, I think what they are saying is DEPTH of the individual models was important to them and as the models have become more focused, the depth is gone.

Its funny to me that people that LIKE the new direction would say something like "The models are more focused now".

And people that do NOT like the new direction might say "The models are more shallow now."

They are both saying the same sort of thing, its just whether they think those are good or bad things.

I am definitely starting to feel that the depth of the original cards could have been kept and that some rules clean-up and model-balance tweaking on the edges of good and bad could have been done much quicker and kept a larger number of people happy.

lol.

I think it comes down to the fact that the game is no longer fun for either of you,

I think what they are clearly saying is that M2E is not fun for them. I do not believe they said much about disliking M1E... Which is STILL "the game".

Its a fool's errand to say "what its all about".

Everyone has their OWN reasons for their words and actions.

Some people take things personally.

And others MAKE it personal.

Its just the way things are... Everywhere... And in everything...

I think its funny when people think "high school crap" is some sort of special "different" behavior when its actually the way the world is all the time and at all ages.

People are giving their opinions. They are negative opinions, so people are negative.

Other people have negative opinions of the negative opinions, so they are negative.

It just is...

In fact, I dunno.

Lol.

In fact = in my opinion.

In fact, I think you are wrong, but its not important. So dropping it.

Right up until there were changes he didn't like, and since then he's done some things that are in fact harmful and divisive

Fact, eh?

Lol.

Go fish.

There is a lot of that lately.

Not really. It's going to be an episode about how the poor persecuted people who don't like M2E were treated badly by the mean old fanboys and how Bill was run out on a rail by the mustache twirling evil new powers-that-be at Wyrd.

.

WIth stupid and baseless comments like that about people that have done far more for the community than you ever will it would be understandable if he did. But he won't because that's not how he is regardless of how forgetful some members of this community seem to be.

There are ways to voice your opinion in a constructive way in a public forum. This episode came off as just venting and hating.

It seems it came off that way to you.

I enjoy watching people's reactions to political speeches. I do not need to be told in advance who is a republican and who is a democrat as their reactions to the speech clearly paint what "ear" they were listening with.

Bill is and always has been snarky and sarcastic. In the past it was about people complaining about imbalances in things he had felt he could regularly beat or about rezzer whining about being under-powered or about any number of any other things.

Now, since this edition is so emotionally charged FOR THE LISTENERS, they hear hate where they used to hear sarcasm and snark.

I did not hear him discussing this any differently than anything else with the sole difference that some of his sarcasm was reserved for a particular individual rather than a group of people such as whiny rezzers.

But, YMMV...

I was happy to hear Gamer's Lounge back on the air.

I look forward to hearing more.

I find it difficult to reconcile my being on the fence about versions with the fact that I agreed with 95% of the podcast.

In hindsight, I suspect my being on the fence has more to do with wanting to know I can still ever play than anything really specific to M2E drawing me over M1E.

(Although yay for Pre-Measure!)

As far as any inter-personal issues between Wyrd staff and its customers/henchman/fans, I'd love to hear more details.

U equate a demo with teaching people how to play the game... I do not.

Book 1 is coming at gencon. There is plenty of thins that are not that are sitting on the store shelves.

Again, I ask who asked for the demo. The store or a new player.

A Shelf full of book 2, 3 and 4 models for a demo asked for by the store seems pretty clear to me.

There is nothing stopping you from mentioning the newer version and that the rules for those models on the shelves will change in 6-8 months.

I do not believe that the differences between M1E and M2E for a demo will be what makes someone decide to buy or not, so using nice pretty cards is a better idea, IMO.

And if they think that Yan Lo box on the shelf is cool looking, why discourage them.

I don't know how many potential players I lost pretty much right after they got their first real look at some of the cards. As soon as that glazed look came over their faces, I knew they were lost to me. So yes, those things certainly "tripped up" new players.

Well... Maybe we are not talking about the same thing here, but to me, it does not sound like you are talking about "new players" as much as you are talking about people to whom you are demonstrating the game and letting read the cards.

I have no experience demoing M2E to non-players, so have no point of reference. It would be interesting to know if the extra 3 or 4 rules missing from select cards was the difference between the "glazed look" or not.

Its also a bit interesting to me that so many of us that were intrigued to play the game as it was are so keen on it being so different for the sake of pulling in people that apparently would not have liked something that we enjoyed so much.

Will we enjoy playing with this theoretical new breed of Malifaux players that would otherwise have stepped away from the first edition?

I guess we'll see.

Sure the new edition has reset almost everyone to square one however soon after release competitive players are just going to do exactly what they did in 1/1.5. Players that participated in the play testing will have more experience/ knowledge than a new player and appear to "possess secret arcane knowledge".

The difference between a good player and a great player has always been the amount of time they dedicate to studying the intricacies of the game. The new edition isn't going to change that. Also consider that in a lot of circumstances those previous "power combos" still exist in the new edition (and in some cases are even more stream lined and effective).

I think there is potential for M2E to be even MORE advantageous to experienced players than newer because upgrades bring decisions above and beyond master choice.

And difficult as it is to accept, masters WILL have "best" configurations and playstyles figured out for them that will reward the experienced or even just "well-read" players that learn what combinations of upgrades help most with what strats and schemes.

Seamus with and without Bag o' tools are two different beasts... Will the newer player know what to do?

I see people that seem to think that teaching new players how to move or what "spells" are on the card is what it takes to teach "the game" and that therefore M2E is easier to teach.

But "the game" is about achieving victory points via your models. And there is nothing easier in M2E about achieving VP than there was in M1E.

There is clearer rules written. Less actions on the individual cards. "Duplicate/similar" abilities are gone, etc.

Those things are helpful. But were THOSE the things tripping up "new" players? Or were those the things that EXPERIENCED players were sick of having to deal with?

My biggest shift from playing other games in coming to Malifaux was truly embracing the idea that there was something other than killing.

IMO, that shift in M2E is MORE COMPLEX than it was in M1E.

But... I do not consider that to be automatically BAD as others seem to equate complexity with...

I think Yan Lo is fantastically fun and the Chi paths let you decide IN GAME how you want to evolve, which is awesome.

But, I do not know anything about the new version of Yan Lo, so unless you have found a pocket of M1E folks that will happily continue on with you, I am not sure how to answer.

I'd like to think that the components of Yan Lo that make him so diverse and fun will somehow be maintained...

Only speaking for myself here, but it seems to me that since many masters have sort of been tailored more towards "doing a particular thing well" that we will learn soon enough which "particular things" are better than "other things".

Old masters might have had more rules on them, but that did bring a bit more diversity in behaviors.

Now, I am not saying this as a judgement that the decisions made were wrong.

Quite the opposite, in some master's cases, I quite like coming back around and making them good at "particular things".

But some masters will be a double edged sword. I like that Nicodem is no longer a paralyze-bot with supplemental summoning.

But I also happen to think that Nicodem with a swarm of dogs+necropunks+<fill in the blank other cheap models> will be a force to recon with that once better understood, could very well dominate.

But I could be wrong. We'll see.

I look on the positive side at a model like Raspy... Who I sort of feel like is simply a better version of Raspy.

Very fun, and feels like I think she ought to...

Now I feel like getting out the Go board...

(Black is OP!)

If a store is asking you to demo, then I would think it would be with expectation that the people hopefully make a purchase. The stores have M1E on the shelves.

If its a person looking to learn the game, then it would make sense to me that they be shown something that will be the future of the game instead.

As a (pitifully weak, 15+ kyu) Go player myself, this is one of the reasons why I didn't like some aspects of 1.5 and much appreciate the improvement in 2.0. Certain 1.5 Masters played like chess, learning and deploying preset (often named!) techniques against one another, with player skill determining the details like when and how the combos were used. 2.0 feels much more like Go to me; fewer wacky rules, much less potential for preset combos to fit many situations, much more thinking on the move and interacting with the opponent with each individual piece. Ultimately a game that relies less on book learning and more on intuition and skill.

Sounds like someone could use a little Fuseki training...

But I get what you mean in general. And seriously, at 15k, do not waste time with Fuseki. Life and Death problems is where its at.

But, just like the cited examples, life and death problems at small numbers of stones are pretty fixed solutions, not intuitive leaps.

The strategy of the game is VERY intuition/experience based, but there is PLENTY of rote memorization in life and death patterns where there are simply correct moves to making life, just as there is rote memorization in malifaux combinations for tactics that help contribute to your overall strategy.

I find a lot of this "complexity" and "skill" discussion to be premature.

M2E is different. To me, that is about all anyone can really accurately say at this point. Comparing YEARS of M1E experience to MONTHS of beta testing of 1/3rd of the models is not a relevant or useful comparison.

I still maintain that when people are taught this game that whatever perceived "complexity" is gone by virtue of fewer sentences on the base cards will be more than compensated for by upgrades, larger game sizes, "scheme pools" and "scheme markers".

Will that make the game worse? Better? Same? No idea...

But, please, can we stop saying that there is some objective measure of "complexity" and that M1E exceeded and that M2E falls below?!?

Swarms in M2E have not been adressed. In particular, swarms with Nicodem.

I suspect that there will be PLENTY of balance concerns.

But only time will tell if there will be as many as M1E.

To my eye, so far M2E has done a better job of "no model left behind" which is certainly a good thing.

The new art all feels sort of similar "mad max / thunder-dome" to me.

I like the diversity of the older crews more.

The new stuff is definitely not bad or anything. I think that it looks quite nice. It just feels a bit more typical to me.