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Malifaux - what next?


wobbly_goggy

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I really don't think doubling points would do that much. There's always gonna be a model curve from good to bad. I don't think the balance between most models is truly significant and usually tiny changes like adding a suit or restricting an action to once per turn, is enough to balance models.

As for the really bad things, cheaper costs isn't going to help. Any stone upgrade could cost 0 and you still wouldn't take it on your master.

I've seen the "higher points leads to more granularity and thus better balance" several times before, and I'm still not convinced. And if it really was the case, why not cripple the value? Surely an even greater price range would allow for even better adjustment and balance. And suddenly we have 40k 3rd edition where you played 150p pts games with upgrades that cost 1 point.

Besides in malifaux increasing the price variation is going to lead to more pre game fiddling and longer list building time, which I'm not a fan of.

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What do you think about getting rid of jokers, folks? Has it been tested before, when M2E was in preparation? Personally, I really hate them. They add nothing positive to the game experience. If I get serious advantage by flipping red, I feel bad for my opponent. If flipping black screws my carefully executed plan, I start to believe that the gods hate me. Simultaneously, in long run jokers are irrelevant for player's win rate - good players still win more games than average and bad ones. What jokers add to the game is another layer of unpredictability. But if I am not alone in the feeling that they simultaneously diminish the enjoyment, why not get rid of them? Like suited schemes: cool idea, which eventually turned out to be bad for the game.

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6 hours ago, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

What do you think about getting rid of jokers, folks? 

I think that Jokers do some really useful stuff that would make the game a fair amount shallower were they to be removed. The fact they can show up helps obfuscate the odds, and makes the value of :+fates and :-fates both harder to calculate, and substantially different from a simple + or -2. They make for some nice risk reward options, add some extra value judgements that I think are really interesting (hold onto or ditch the BJ?), and they are useful for more casual players as a balancing factor, making sure there's always a chance things can go right for you even if you are in a bad position. Plus thanks to the nature of the fate deck, they happen one a turn if at all, making them less obtrusive than some other crit systems which rely on dice.

My main argument here is I guess that some unpredictability is good and necessary for a deep and intetesting game. Once you remove too much of it, the game begins to stop being about seeing whose personal value judgements line up best with the game's, and more about who has calculated the optimal strategy more accurately.

 

And as you said, since they don't really affect a player's long term win rate there shouldn't be too much of a problem with swinginess. I think tournament concerns should really be directed against the best of 1 format that they are usually run with - it makes sense due to time constraints but I think for good consistent results,  best of 3 or even 5 is necessary.

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Myself, I feel that the Jokers have an important role to play in limiting the power level of the top combinations and models. As it is, the game has an increasing problem with the amount of combinations that can be summarised as 'go anywhere, then kill anything' and about the only thing keeping them a little bit under control is that a joker flip against the key model, still very unlikely, can limit things. Similarly, it keeps the tougher models from being quite untouchable, because there's always a slight risk an attack might get past their high defence and hand full of big cards, or flip the red joker from damage. If anything, I'd like to see some check on being able to keep the black joker in hand to stop it ever coming up, but I accept this would be very hard to implement. 

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Playing with the BJ in hand all game limits your hand though, so I never do that.

Removing the jokers is a terrible idea, as it removes some of the randomness of the game and the fun. Some of the best moments in Malifaux are the ones where a Black Joker screws you over in a pivotal moment and vice versa; the red joker saves the day. 

There's got to be some flavour and risk in a game such as this, or it'll become dull.

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The upcoming Encounter boxes is another 'What's next', and it would be very nice if there were new story encounters in there.(Still hoping for a story encounter book with solo encounters/campaign)

 

Maybe the box will be about Nicodem and Lady J and inlude alternative models (though unlikely, as Nicodem already got one) but after having read the latest Chronicles...

 

Spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

The Judge might need an alternative model. 

Also, I'd find it a bit weird to play a master that is already dead in the storyline. The alternative versions of them are still perfectly fine - a nice way of forwarding the plot and even being able to kill of main characters while still have a version of the same master in play. 

 

Now, every master with an alternative sculpt should be nervous ...:-P. 

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On 16/12/2017 at 8:21 PM, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

What do you think about getting rid of jokers, folks? Has it been tested before, when M2E was in preparation? Personally, I really hate them. They add nothing positive to the game experience. If I get serious advantage by flipping red, I feel bad for my opponent. If flipping black screws my carefully executed plan, I start to believe that the gods hate me. Simultaneously, in long run jokers are irrelevant for player's win rate - good players still win more games than average and bad ones. What jokers add to the game is another layer of unpredictability. But if I am not alone in the feeling that they simultaneously diminish the enjoyment, why not get rid of them? Like suited schemes: cool idea, which eventually turned out to be bad for the game

I would tone down red joker on damage for sure. In such a agressive enviroment flipping RJ to damage can end games in turn one. I can live with BJ as it is but how RJ blows things up when having negative flips to damage I dont like it. 

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Malifaux's main gimmick is "Bad Things Happen."  Why would you want to take out the main thing that makes this true?  As someone who's been playing this game for the past 4-ish years, I think it's hilarious when it happens both for and against me.  It makes it so that it's not just a pure game of statistics.  There's always a chance that your best laid plans get screwed over by luck.  The cards have to fall almost perfectly in a 54 card deck for you to get that huge damage or fail that critical flip.  I've had games where both jokers barely affected the outcome of the game but there have been others where I felt like I flipped the Black Joker at least 8 times.  It's honestly a part of the game that I would hate to see gone and I know there are other's who think the same.  Hopefully the developers would never think of taking this mechanic out of the game. 

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3 hours ago, -Loki- said:

The rise in the amount of min 3 damage tracks has definitely amped up the red jokers damage potential. Though that's more an issue with so many min 3 tracks than the red joker mechanic itself.

What upsets me is taking it no matter negative flips. Dealing severe and weak in one blow mean not only more damage but also armour and prevention are less effective than receiving the same amount in two blows. Its painful to strugle not to lose your master to a single alpha cerberus or vick burning high cards and stones to give negative flips to survive one more turn and getting utterly red jokered. Maybe if red joker when flipped allowed an additional damage flip with the same modiffiers or it only made severe I would be more content. 

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On ‎15‎.‎12‎.‎2017 at 7:06 PM, Adran said:

It may be friendlier, but its much harder to do (since Marcus is the only person I can think of who will let you get an activation out of a model without it being their activation so you can still get reactivate).

Don't have the cards on hand but can't Tara do it as well? She just very rarely does.

40 minutes ago, Sybaris said:

Has there been any official discussion of M3 or is this more or less speculation/brainstorming. Is this edition in such need of a clean up already?

Nothing official that I know of. But it seems unlikely that Malifaux could get a new book every Gencon forever so a new edition is likely to hit somewhere along the line. Now, whether that is 2018, 2019, or 2020 is up for speculation.

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The Joker conversation is funny in that in M1.5 a Red Joker on Damage was Severe and another unmodified flip (so you could get double Severe). There were giant threads about it and toning it down to its current version was seen by many as getting rid of all that was fun in Malifaux and Bad Things could no longer happen and the end of the world :P 

I do agree that Jokers serve an important function. I wouldn't be averse to toning it down a tiny bit on damage (making it just do Severe or Severe+1) but I won't be sad if it isn't changed, either.

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2 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Don't have the cards on hand but can't Tara do it as well? She just very rarely does.

Nothing official that I know of. But it seems unlikely that Malifaux could get a new book every Gencon forever so a new edition is likely to hit somewhere along the line. Now, whether that is 2018, 2019, or 2020 is up for speculation.

I agree M3E is on it's way, mainly because I'm not sure how many more books can be brought out at gencon without the game feeling bloated.

Suggestions that i've seen include

*a book with upgrades for henchmen and enforcers - this would be very cool, but I don't know how many models sales it'll lead to.

*a new faction - not going to be everyones cup of tea, but would provide for a new book.

*M2.5E - upgrading all the rules and abilities that need a tweek without redoing everything.

 

This year we have the release of ToS, so I don't really see wyrd taking the risk of a M3E/having the time to create a new version.

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On 29/12/2017 at 1:57 PM, Math Mathonwy said:

Don't have the cards on hand but can't Tara do it as well? She just very rarely does.

Doesn't she only "activate" enemy models when she unburies them...  I guess she could do that twice in a turn and it could still activate ( and re-activate) 

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On 17/12/2017 at 6:13 AM, Gnomezilla said:

Jokers in. A game without risk is just a spreadsheet.

I like Mfx because random factor is somewhat reduced by replacing dice with cards,cheating fate options, makes planning/tactics/etc. more important. Pushing it slightly toward such game as chess. Is chess a spreadsheet?

Still, jokers are integral part of traditional card deck, they should stay, present rules for them are acceptable.

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26 minutes ago, daniello_s said:

IMO main thing which should be done is balancing somehow models which don’t stand a chance currently against ‘most obvious choices’ in the faction and sorting out vantage point rule because this rule is so crazy and difficult to use many players literally hate it.

hopefully when the jan errata/faq is released there will be updates to under-used models.

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Unfortunately, I think that what WE as players would mostly like from a M3E (some rule adjustments and character/faction fine-tuning) is not what Wyrd would (should) like. Remember that Wyrd is still a miniature company, and a for-profit institution, and what a miniature company needs, is to sell miniatures. Special sculpts, books etc. can be a side, but can't keep the circus running by themselves, unless I'm thoroughly mistaken. So adjusting rules and characters, or in general most of the proposals that I've read in this thread, would do little, I believe, for Wyrd's future profitability. 

Since I agree that adding any more models to the current edition would bloat it excessively (IMHO we're already at the limit), the most viable option to me seems adding a new faction or two, composed of entirely new models, or remastering (splitting, joining, rearranging) current factions. This way people would really have reason to buy a relevant number of miniatures. After all, this is what happened with Warhammer, which I take as reference as one of the oldest, longest-standing mini games out there (until its recent, tragic demise :( ): at various points in time, chaos was split into three, undead were split into two, etc. and then new "factions" were added like Ogres, for instance.

In fact, current fluff suggests some of this already, with the rivalry Ramos-Ironsides perhaps suggesting a faction split, and perhaps some faction changes (McMourning, Zoraida et al.), plus several others (Von Schill was a close one!)

The other option is that The Other Side could have an unexpected success (at least, unexpected from my point of view - I'm not a big fan), bringing in some serious cash, which would mean that Wyrd wouldn't need to rely on Malifaux to make money and could actually dedicate to improving it, balancing it etc. This is also similar to what happened with 40K (which quickly even surpassed the original WHFB, and by far), except that I hope Malifaux won't get the same neglect that WHFB got from GW.

I agree that current issues with under/over powered models and other fine-tuning are being dealt with erratas, and now with the app it is really easy to keep track of these changes without needing new physical cards.

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I'd like to see 2v2, 2v1, and types like that supported more in Malifaux.

Right now, Malifaux is pretty much just officially supported as a 1v1 game. You can use some unofficial rules to make the other modes work though. Like maybe half soulstones to each player, players on the same team have to hire from the same faction, etc. Would like to see official support though because sometimes you and your buddies are more than just two people.

 

I'd also like to see upgrades become more "reactionary" purchases. What I mean by this is that I'd like to see the choosing upgrades step moved to take place after both crews are hired and revealed. This allows people to make some small modifications to their crews to help balance out what they're fighting against instead of it being a "well crap, I'm against X and I didn't take Y. That sucks"

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