Hopes for the design team.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Wyrd is hiring for their design team! And while I'm not at a stage where I'm ready to drop my career and pursue my passion of game design, I am ready to post some opinions on the internet! So here's my takes on what I want to see from the new design team.

More of the same.

If it ain't broke... Don't fix it!

Malifaux is an incredible game. Definitely in the top 5 tabletop games I have ever played. So just keep doing more of what you're doing, Wyrd! Your process works.

Rigour and robustness for the rules and game balance.

Wyrd does... Pretty well with its rules. There's a reasonably coherent process, but it does have some glaring gaps. And sometimes outright issues..

• Seamus & McMourning cremation combo - just being able to delete a model under the official rules.
  • Also the infinite attacks, the stat 9 rogue necromancy attacks, etc. Plastic surgery should perhaps have received more scrutiny.
• Klaus Pocketful of Personalities trigger (likely) ignores requirements, giving access to many combos that probably aren't intended and may cause some serious issues.
  • But then... Finding these combos and trying to break the game is a fine line, so maybe it is worth pushing the envelope here...
• Reva's lampads come in with 0 health
• Reva dies to any sort of master-obey effect.
• Etc

You can make other complaints about game balance, but all of these issues relate directly to niche cases of the rules where the ability is doing something that is probably out of the scope of what they want happening.

Also the rules in general require quite a bit of discussion to make work, so continuing to smooth out and streamline the rules (or expand where necessary) seems like a good thing. Avoiding rules bloat where possible will open space to really get into detail when necessary.

Design principles

Hoffman 2's pylon markers are something I've spoken about plenty, but it fits into a similar category to plastic surgery and other things - there should probably be some foundational design principles to the game.

Prior to Hoffman, nothing got to have indestructible impassable markers (and that was probably an intentional design principle). Agent 46 really demonstrated that the ability to mimic is too powerful when comboed with other powerful abilities, and then Plastic Surgery takes that to the next level with very few restrictions.

There's a balance to be had between having limits and pushing them, but I hope this is a topic Wyrd will actively engage with as to where the line is (and I'm sure that line shifts all the time).

Structure for thinking about player types

This may be something Wyrd already does, but... Players come in many distinct types. In magic, you have Spikes, Vorthos, Jonnys, Timmys, and Melvins.

In Malifaux, there's different types of players (competitive, casual, keyword-oriented, power-gamers, hobbyists, etc).

I'm sure they already think about this plenty, but I hope they'll continue to recognise the different needs of different players and actively engage with those issues - for example, game balance philosophy has critical distinctions if you're balancing around casual players or power-gamers (or trying to balance for both). It also has implications for data collection.

I of course acknowledge that Wyrd already does a great job of nailing flavour, mechanics, game balance, etc on most models. I just hope they build on what they have already done, and structured thinking of player types may help if they're not already doing it.

A coherent plan for DMH...

Given the speed of release, it seems very likely to me that DMH is going to become a serious part of the Malifaux landscape sooner or later... If we have to have DMH, I want it to feel EPIC.

Some things that might help make it feel EPIC:

• ~5 second animated teaser
  • I realise even 5 seconds of animation may be beyond Wyrd's budget, but dream big, right?
• Failing that, epic art pieces depicting the scenes
• Various social media/marketing hype - it should feel like a big buildup and a big result.
• Prioritisation of story over business.
• A sense of finality.

Those last two may seem a bit odd, so allow me to clarify.

To me, DMH feels cheap when it is clearly a business-oriented decision. Ultimately of course, ALL of wyrd's decisions are business-oriented decisions, but for DMH I think we need a sense that there is more to it than just business. For this, there needs to be an epic story result.

In stories, one thing you can do is permanently kill off characters. I'm not saying they should always do this, but if every DMH character ends up as a puppet head on a shelf or a soulstone that is flown away by a vulture, then why would we be invested in the results? It is just a rotation where they bring characters in and out as needed to be able to sell models.

I want an epic story feel. For example, if Molly has to die....

• Maybe the Gorgon inhabits her body, trapping molly's soul in a soulstone...
  • And then the soulstone gets shattered at the end of the story, giving closure.
• Maybe Archie charges the burning man, determined to crush him.
  • For the first time in his unlife, Archie feels the pain of fire. He howls, as his entire body is enveloped in flames. In one last gesture of his love for Molly, he throws his melting ice cream to her as his body turns to ash.

 If characters need to die, I want it to feel epic. That's my big wish for DMH!

And those are my hopes for design!

[SEV]

44 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Also the rules in general require quite a bit of discussion to make work, so continuing to smooth out and streamline the rules (or expand where necessary) seems like a good thing. Avoiding rules bloat where possible will open space to really get into detail when necessary

This is, on, the big issues for Wyrd. 

They're doing well on the design front. I feel that they lack some real playtesting power (relying on customer for that is ok, but you need people inside the shop that can review the design and catch the problems before release). 

As I said I think the design teams is doing well. They have some interesting ideas and can think out of the box. I would love to see even more top down design. Some ability often feel off on a models because it hard to link them to what the models is supposed to be fluff wise (most of the time they nail it though).

Finally I hope the new designer will be focus on the whole game experience. We need interesting strat and scheme (there's a lot of development that can be done here), campaign/legacy mod, multiplayer, etc. 

GL to all the candidates. 

 

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

brave man  lol if i had posted this i would have been torn to pieces lol 

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 minutes ago, Mr Oogie Boogie said:

brave man  lol if i had posted this i would have been torn to pieces lol 

Haha, I guess I have 6000 posts and try to make sure most of them are positive >.<

Or maybe my rambling was so long no one bothered to read it xD

That said, if you have opinions, would love to hear them!

[SEV]

5 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Or maybe my rambling was so long no one bothered to read it xD

I have been call many names, but I'm not Arya Stark 😜

[solkan]

On 12/10/2021 at 3:03 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

A coherent plan for DMH...

Given the speed of release, it seems very likely to me that DMH is going to become a serious part of the Malifaux landscape sooner or later... If we have to have DMH, I want it to feel EPIC.

Some things that might help make it feel EPIC:

• ~5 second animated teaser
  • I realise even 5 seconds of animation may be beyond Wyrd's budget, but dream big, right?
• Failing that, epic art pieces depicting the scenes
• Various social media/marketing hype - it should feel like a big buildup and a big result.
• Prioritisation of story over business.
• A sense of finality.

Those last two may seem a bit odd, so allow me to clarify.

To me, DMH feels cheap when it is clearly a business-oriented decision. Ultimately of course, ALL of wyrd's decisions are business-oriented decisions, but for DMH I think we need a sense that there is more to it than just business. For this, there needs to be an epic story result.

In stories, one thing you can do is permanently kill off characters. I'm not saying they should always do this, but if every DMH character ends up as a puppet head on a shelf or a soulstone that is flown away by a vulture, then why would we be invested in the results? It is just a rotation where they bring characters in and out as needed to be able to sell models.

This is complete nonsense.  The Malifaux setting has magic, the undead, and documented instances of time travel.  Permanently killing off a character in this setting is as boring as "the author hasn't bothered to bring them back yet" in comic book writing.  Hundreds and thousands of anonymous or named characters have been killed in the stories over the years, where's the impact of that?

To be frank, people calling for character death or other high stakes things to happen in a story line sound like the sort of people who want all of the thrill of watching someone else jump off a cliff.  

On 12/10/2021 at 3:03 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

I want an epic story feel. For example, if Molly has to die....

• Maybe the Gorgon inhabits her body, trapping molly's soul in a soulstone...
  • And then the soulstone gets shattered at the end of the story, giving closure.
• Maybe Archie charges the burning man, determined to crush him.
  • For the first time in his unlife, Archie feels the pain of fire. He howls, as his entire body is enveloped in flames. In one last gesture of his love for Molly, he throws his melting ice cream to her as his body turns to ash.

 If characters need to die, I want it to feel epic. That's my big wish for DMH!

Let me offer a simple counter point to this.

During M2E, Wyrd staged the climactic encounter between Lady Justice and Nicodem and then put the forward a vote for who would win.  Please look up how that turned out:  After several pages of story were written, the Judge got a new model.

 

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

Personally I think they Nedd more crews to be brought in to replace the dead ones. From more carved backgrounds. For example we k ow what happened to London but nothing on what happened to the north. Back when malifaux is set the north south divide and hatred of the south existed even back then so the north wouldn't rush to help London. We have welsh miners in malifaux for example. And the French where are the fre lnch in all this.  And the Africa s. I think there is far more scope for new crew to fill rhe place on the desd mans hands. Not to mention the other families of the bayou, or perhaps an expansion into other areas of malifaux woth new crews feom neverborn or creatures from the new areas. 

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

Or the gibbering hordes. The sea creatures may be good for new crews not just alts. There are so many possible replacements for dead characters and their followers. 

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

I read a story where zoraida creates a rift and travels back in time to earth to leave a souls tone for Emily who I assume is herself so Oraida can open portals for an unspecified amount of time. So it would be easy to introduce creatures feom other parts of malifaux or earth to add replacement crews for dead man's hand crews. I mean i5s a good way 5o keep the game fresh but o camnunderstand why players don't like it cos it makes their models obsolete 

[Adran]

On 12/10/2021 at 9:03 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

A coherent plan for DMH...

Given the speed of release, it seems very likely to me that DMH is going to become a serious part of the Malifaux landscape sooner or later... If we have to have DMH, I want it to feel EPIC.

Some things that might help make it feel EPIC:

• ~5 second animated teaser
  • I realise even 5 seconds of animation may be beyond Wyrd's budget, but dream big, right?
• Failing that, epic art pieces depicting the scenes
• Various social media/marketing hype - it should feel like a big buildup and a big result.
• Prioritisation of story over business.
• A sense of finality.

Those last two may seem a bit odd, so allow me to clarify.

To me, DMH feels cheap when it is clearly a business-oriented decision. Ultimately of course, ALL of wyrd's decisions are business-oriented decisions, but for DMH I think we need a sense that there is more to it than just business. For this, there needs to be an epic story result.

In stories, one thing you can do is permanently kill off characters. I'm not saying they should always do this, but if every DMH character ends up as a puppet head on a shelf or a soulstone that is flown away by a vulture, then why would we be invested in the results? It is just a rotation where they bring characters in and out as needed to be able to sell models.

I want an epic story feel. For example, if Molly has to die....

• Maybe the Gorgon inhabits her body, trapping molly's soul in a soulstone...
  • And then the soulstone gets shattered at the end of the story, giving closure.
• Maybe Archie charges the burning man, determined to crush him.
  • For the first time in his unlife, Archie feels the pain of fire. He howls, as his entire body is enveloped in flames. In one last gesture of his love for Molly, he throws his melting ice cream to her as his body turns to ash.

 If characters need to die, I want it to feel epic. That's my big wish for DMH!

And those are my hopes for design!

I question a lot of the assumptions that seem to be made in this section. 

I got the feeling that Dead Mans hand was an experiment for Wyrd, but I'm not sure exactly what they were testing, so its hard to say if it was successful or not. I don't think it seems fair to stick it down as a money making grab. 

There are effectively 5 dead mans hand characters (There are 10, but 4 are totems for the attached Master, and the last in a unit that was only ever summoned by one of the masters). 

Of those 5 I would say that 4 have very clear story driven reasons for death. 

Ryle - Not only is this the conclusion of the story that has been on going for 10+ years, it clearly isn't for design purposes since the rules for Melissa KORE could easily have been put on the Ryle model. 

Nicodem - There obviously had to be some fall out from the customer driven choice between Nicodem and Justice. This was 2 large dedicated Chrionicles stories, and a worldwide player choice to reach the point we are at. Not sure what he plans would have been if Justice lost, but I imagine there was that alternative considered. 

Ramos- Large storyline with work on convincing his underlings that he needed to be removed. Parts of his niche in gameplay are filled by Hoffman joining the arcanists. He was on the fall since his supported faction failed to win the TOS worldwide campaign I think. 

Lilith - Large storyline following the release of Titania and Lilith opposing her. Also Nekima has been looking for revenge on her sister since Lilith stole leadership of the Nephlim from her. This might have been partially driven by design reasons, in that could eb seen as a mixture of Titanias plant life control and Nekimas Aggresion. But that could easily have been resolved in a different way, like Titania took such extreme control of the plant life, that Lilith just could no longer control it. 

Collodi - Little in the way of story leading up to the end of collodi. I have no real idea why he went, except I must admit I have never liked the way Collodi played. I didn't mind the concept of a toy puppet who was a master puppeteer but I didn't like the implementation they did in either first or second edition. You could view that Neverborn already had multiple masters that controlled people and so could afford to lose one. 

 

We don't know if anyone will return form DMH. We probably aren't going to find that out until at least next edition. The fact that there are possible ways for the characters to return doesn't automatically mean they will. In 4 of the 5 cases I would say that there was a significant story build up to the removal of the character. There has been major story changes for several other characters over the years that have resulted in similarly large story changes, but did not "kill" the model. If the game is set in a dynamic setting, then there does need to be some fall, as well as some rise. That doesn't always need to mean death, but stories with no risk of death are often a lot less fun. 

I don't know that they gained much design space in "killing the characters", when in several of the cases the design niche the character occupied was sort of given out anyway, and often to an existing model, so not even likely to drive many new sales. At least 3 of the character removals were "losers" in player based events to some degree, so they had a fairly large story and player involvement.  I imagine the lack of final Closure on the characters was based on some degree that this was an experiment and they didn't want to not be able to undo the effects if it was a failure. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

On 12/12/2021 at 1:06 PM, solkan said:

This is complete nonsense.  The Malifaux setting has magic, the undead, and documented instances of time travel.  Permanently killing off a character in this setting is as boring as "the author hasn't bothered to bring them back yet" in comic book writing.  Hundreds and thousands of anonymous or named characters have been killed in the stories over the years, where's the impact of that?

To be frank, people calling for character death or other high stakes things to happen in a story line sound like the sort of people who want all of the thrill of watching someone else jump off a cliff.  

Let me offer a simple counter point to this.

During M2E, Wyrd staged the climactic encounter between Lady Justice and Nicodem and then put the forward a vote for who would win.  Please look up how that turned out:  After several pages of story were written, the Judge got a new model.

 

To me, that Nicodem/Lady Justice hype sounds pretty epic (although I don't know I buy the 'anything can happen' vibe. Sure you get some stories like Dragon Ball Z, but plenty of time travel shows have permanent consequences).

@Adran that all sounds very reassuring. It would be very fun to witness that sort of hype going on over the removal of a character.

I should have done a separate thread on DMH stuff. There was a good chat on discord about it a while back, but it was theorised that expanding the role of DMH seems a bit inevitable as the game has to start dealing with huge numbers of new models. I suppose in theory they could limit it solely to new titles for the rest of the edition, but judging by the growth rate of new models so far this edition it seems like they'll have to cut back at some point.

But that's all just speculation.

[Adran]

1 minute ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

@Adran that all sounds very reassuring. It would be very fun to witness that sort of hype going on over the removal of a character.

I should have done a separate thread on DMH stuff. There was a good chat on discord about it a while back, but it was theorised that expanding the role of DMH seems a bit inevitable as the game has to start dealing with huge numbers of new models. I suppose in theory they could limit it solely to new titles for the rest of the edition, but judging by the growth rate of new models so far this edition it seems like they'll have to cut back at some point.

But that's all just speculation.

Right from the first book they were people wishing things change. Molly starts the very first  book of dead, and then raised and begins a journey to gain her own mind back. I think there were calls for her as a character before she was ever one. They dropped a building on Lady Justice at the end of Book 2, and there was a serious thought that that would be the end of her as a character. (Book 3 had her recover slowly, but for a year there wasn't anything said. You can probably look at the trheads in the forum from 2011 about the speculation). (This also lead to my favourite "nightmare" set ever, the dead justice set which had the Justice crew in various states of undead and stat cards for their Guild modes and Resserectionist models)

I don't know how big a range Malifaux can support. I think people have been claiming its been getting too big since book 2 introduced masters 16-20. From a crude mathematical view point M3 currently has less possible lists than M2 had at the start of it. (Whilst there have been new models introduced, and new masters, that's a lesser amount than the reduction in hiring possibilities both in the removal of the mercenary ability and other out of faction hiring, the reduced possibilities due to OOK tax and the reduction in the rare numbers of models. )

I appriacate that you didn't play prior to M3, but it does seem strange to complain about the lack of stories on chaarcter deatsh when there were fairly significant stories. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

7 minutes ago, Adran said:

I appriacate that you didn't play prior to M3, but it does seem strange to complain about the lack of stories on chaarcter deatsh when there were fairly significant stories. 

Well, it isn't so much complaints as looking forward and hoping the next batch feels epic.

A fancy animated video for example would be a step forward.

Although perhaps useful to note that my impression as a new player of DMH has mostly been 'some characters they put on the back burner but left a story mechanism for bringing them back if we want to (probably for business reasons).'

So whatever it felt like at the time, the aftermath does feel a bit cheap.

9 minutes ago, Adran said:

 

I don't know how big a range Malifaux can support. I think people have been claiming its been getting too big since book 2 introduced masters 16-20. From a crude mathematical view point M3 currently has less possible lists than M2 had at the start of it. (Whilst there have been new models introduced, and new masters, that's a lesser amount than the reduction in hiring possibilities both in the removal of the mercenary ability and other out of faction hiring, the reduced possibilities due to OOK tax and the reduction in the rare numbers of models. )

That's very true that potentially the game could fit quite a few more models... Yet for most keywords you can already feel some neglect for models, and it is difficult to imagine that game balance will be able to be maintained at current growth rates.

Of course, maybe just putting more staff time on balance and rigour will go a long way! 

The design team expanding could mean that the current metrics are a bit useless, and that the game won't need DMH for quite some time.

[fire5tone]

54 minutes ago, Adran said:

 

Collodi - Little in the way of story leading up to the end of collodi. I have no real idea why he went, except I must admit I have never liked the way Collodi played. I didn't mind the concept of a toy puppet who was a master puppeteer but I didn't like the implementation they did in either first or second edition. You could view that Neverborn already had multiple masters that controlled people and so could afford to lose one. 

My personal theory on "why collodi" (especially after having read the lore) is that he's effectively a stiff brick lore wise, given the direction wyrd has decided to take Neverborn in the last 4 books (a psuedo split faction fighting itself) to me collodi always just seemed to exist, unable to properly be slotted in anywhere so they took him out (for now, and now that Lucius has him I can see him gaining some kinda trajectory)

But with his removal they added Euripides, who they got into lore relevance real quick

[ShinChan]

I agree with almost everything that @Maniacal_cackle said about the two following topics:

• Rigour and robustness for the rules and game balance
• Design principles

But there is another important thing that I think Wyrd is doing quite bad and it needs to be mention. M3E was great at streamlining rules, removing redundancies and, in general, making the game more accessible for new players. Sadly, this part is getting lost, first with the release of Explorer's Society and now, again with Malifaux Burns.

There are abilities that do almost the same, and have complete different names, and there are new long-lasting effects that are becoming harder to remember and they're gonna lead to more "Gotcha" moments. I understand that, for the sake of diversity and keep people engaged and buying models, you have to come up with new ideas. However, the same principle of, at least naming convention, should stay. Some examples:

Seems like I cannot upload more images, but other examples are:

• Mecha MeeMaw: Heaps of Trash
• Mei Feng Foreman: Hazard Pay

And there are more. If we already lost " The Flaming Fist Of The Great Carlos Vasquez" from M2E for the sake of keeping things as simple as possible and easier for newcomers, let's not make that sacrifice be for nothing.

[muraki]

I think its hard to really tie everything back to a m2e m3e design goal doc and call out the company for 'betraying their vision'.  They did a lot of great work to clean up various parts (specially around conditions) to make things clearer.  Have they backtracked a bit, course, but I dont think anyone would be as happy with the last 2 books if they broke 0 new ground on abilities / actions and just reused what was in the game. 

As for abilitiy names, its a tough one.  There's a bit of a scale.  Re-using stuff is great, except that everything doesn't fit every model.  Sure a lot of models could use swords, but what if you want a medical attack?  The actions on stuff like the necrotic machine / others are pretty specific and have various downsides (like medical attacks tending to be 0 inch melee ranges) so if you're copying one of those actions, you now either need to build a character around a 0 inch melee, or have an attack that a lot of people will consider 'trash' because you're reusing something instead of building something new.

And that doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of people just look at the cards for the 'fluff' for a character instead of the stories.  So with that in mind, heaps of trash on Mei wouldn't make sense the way it works for Mah,  hazard pay could be a bit more global, but as they're both keyword locked it would have to be something more like 'hazard pay (foundry)' which puts the devs in the odd situation where they have to find something vague enough that they could go (keyword) on it, but still give a feeling of flavor for the master, which is a hard needle to thread.

[RisingPhoenix]

I think the biggest problems for Malifaux aren't really design related.  They're related to marketing, regional support, and new player experience.  Therefore for new design team members my hope is as follows:

Get someone who is social and good at interacting with new players and groups

Malifaux was created by a company that was already deep in the niche of miniatures games.  It has always been a product aimed at the desires of a niche, and made for the desires of a niche.  A lot of their marketing and products have reflected that.  The design team needs members who can step outside that, and are vocal and present with interacting with people who aren't in Malifaux's traditional market.  Quite frankly Wyrd doesn't need to convince me or Maniacal_Cackle to buy even more plastic - they need more players doing the same, and they need to look at design elements that hurt the NPE and ones that help it.

Get someone willing to be active on social media and show up on YouTube/Podcasts/etc.

Wyrd's approach to the community started out as great, mainly because their competition was Games Workshop who treats having a community like having leprosy and does everything it can to swiftly eradicate them when they spring up.  In contrast, Wyrd was great! 

In 2021 they're more great... ish.  Things like the Dead Man's Hand itself were communicated terribly, the messaging has been non-existent.  Why are they making changes?  Where is the game going?  What do they want?  The design team does not communicate, this is... bad.

Get someone who loves going crazy

Malifaux is the best competitive miniatures game out there outside of maybe Guildball.  Guildball is dead.  That's not a complete coincidence.

This game needs some more crazy in it.  Hype stuff.  Escalation leagues.  Ridiculous alternative game modes.  Things that build casual hype.  The format of "Strategy+2 Scheme" is almost infinitely versatile, and I could think of a dozen things that you could do with it that would be GREAT for the lore and fun.  What do I mean?  Here's an example:  Ramus was trying to build a giant spider robot for... I dunno, the entire game's history until he got DMC takedowned.  Why not have a scenario that's "Giant Spider Robot" fight where two masters fight for control of the half-finished giant spider robot?  Taking different control points could order it to do different things, and it would also spew out random effects onto the battlefield every turn (like neutral tiny spiders that attacked the nearest enemies, or making everyone take cover before it washed the battlefield in fire).  Balanced and competitive?  Fuck nah.  Hype event people would buy accessories for and play 3-5 times and get good value for their money with? Sure!  And it's great to pull in people going 'what the hell is that?'

It doesn't really have to touch the competitive game much, but things like Explorer's society shouldn't drop without some crazy awesome event that is reflected in products and marketing campaigns.  Trust me, GW would be marketing the shit out of anything as big as a new faction.  And they became the biggest minatures company with a game that is, as a game, um.  Well, not as good as Malifaux, I think we won't argue that (or maybe several other miniatures game company's products).  Crazy and good marketing hype are big deals.

 

 

Weirdly this is stuff that wouldn't really impact my enjoyment of the game that much, but I think it's what Wyrd needs to be looking for, 110%.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Yeah, that encapsulates what I'm saying about DMH, @RisingPhoenix, but hits the most important points and broadens it out to other topics

Good points all around!