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Malifaux 2.0 rumours?


PokiePrawn

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I don't play warmachine (for quite a few reasons) but i do know a fair bit about the game and correct me if i am wrong but warmachine had a major overhaul and rules changes when it changed edition.

Malifaux does not need an extensive overhaul nor do the core rules need changing what it needs is a well written rule book and a few minor tweaks to some of the stat cards.

PS i don't mind when warmachine is referenced in context but if you want to talk about which casters are better because they do whatever and what lists won tournaments then you can **** off to the warmachine forum where people might even care.

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I don't play warmachine (for quite a few reasons) but i do know a fair bit about the game and correct me if i am wrong but warmachine had a major overhaul and rules changes when it changed edition.

Malifaux does not need an extensive overhaul nor do the core rules need changing what it needs is a well written rule book and a few minor tweaks to some of the stat cards.

PS i don't mind when warmachine is referenced in context but if you want to talk about which casters are better because they do whatever and what lists won tournaments then you can **** off to the warmachine forum where people might even care.

Not nearly as heavy as you might think. The biggest overhaul was the rebalancing of the models themselves, which was done with significant impact from the community. The rules themselves were refined with the biggest change there being the symbols that are shorthand for a number of common abilities.

Also, no need to be hostile. You're new, mate. Calm down. No need to tell me to "**** off". If you don't like it, stay out of the conversation.

And besides, if you don't think Malifaux needs some model overhauls, Wyrd apparently disagrees with you. We have already seen a DRASTIC overhaul on Hamelin and all of the models associated with him. Dreamer has had some significant changes. Pandora NEEDS the Hamelin treatment bad. Nekima needs to be overhauled since what she was originally capable of was abusive, then she was changed to her supposed "intended" state which has left her either extremely cornercase or just flatout useless because of her cost, depending on who you ask. And given that when the Hamelin errata hit, they implied she was next, it is likely to be an extensive change to her.

So no, even on the model side of things, Malifaux is far from perfect. You'll also note that in my comparisons to Warmachine's edition change, I am wanting Malifaux to emulate the good aspects of that edition change, to learn from their successes and failures in that. Warmachine is FAR larger as a game and community despite a higher price point than Malifaux. And that without the "Only game in town for 20+ years" headstart that GW has that has solidified the idea that Warhammer = miniatures gaming in so many minds. And the game truly exploded with its refined Mk2. Why people are so hesitant about Malifaux getting a 2.0 is beyond me. Avatars were a misstep in how they were handled, but Book 4 certainly shows me they have learned a lot. I think a 2.0 is what would allow Malifaux to truly explode as a game system.

Edited by Alviaran
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I feel like puppet wars was like a attempt to do something simple with malifaux and it fell flat on it's face, but I've never actually played puppet wars. Maybe it's the ****, who knows.

Puppet Wars (either edition) was definately not a simplified version of Malifaux. It uses cards and the same suits but virtually everything else was different.

It fell on its face largely (my opinion of course) due to poor display presence (the box was pretty stark) and high cost (especially as a blind purpose). Another issue was that as the community was building the re-write was announced (pretty much stealing the wind from its sails as people were hesitant to buy in to something that was going to change).

It is, however, relevant. Warmachine has had the most high profile edition change in gaming I'd argue because of the way it was handled, the involvement from their players in the Field Test. I feel this also makes it the most successful edition change. How many other games have seen their communities explode after an edition change? I see more and more people upset with GW's edition changes. How about the revolts from long time DnD players over the last couple editions? And in that case, there is nothing saying they cannot find plenty of people wanting to play (hell, look and 3.5 games can still be found). For them, a new edition is just a lack of official support and yet people got very upset over those.

And while the edition change and certain things are certainly not perfect, Wyrd can certainly learn from both what they did right and wrong with that edition change. When someone else does it mostly right, it's worth taking notice.

I agree with some of this but not all of it (of course). Warmachine/ Hordes was pretty big before the edition change (and I would bet that any increase was due more to GW releasing a pretty crappy set of rules than anything else).

The open playtest wasn't itself a bad thing (I participated in it) however it allowed a lot of noise to very little signal. There are still plenty of "wonky" interactions present in the current rules system (some of which are very similar to issues in Malifaux) and really unbalanced things. I do agree it is much better than it was but it is still far from perfect (not that Malifaux is either).

Also I absolutely hate the stupid little icons.

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Me neither, I actually rather like the icons, I think they are a good way of conveying information in a concise form that doesn't take up much space on the cards. Much better than individual lines of text certainly. In fact I think the cards are one aspect where Malifaux could do with a redesign, and where PP does it better. Just starting with one whole quarter of every card being entirely wasted and yet many cards struggling for space to fit everything onto in a good, readable format.

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Kind of the bit I don't get there, Gorbad. Can clean up the cards. A cleaner card with less text =/= dumbed down, which seems to be the thing I hear a lot as a reason to not go to a MK2 (or why PP's is bad).

And I don't think you need to icon-ify everything. Particularly, triggers don't need one. Leave Crit Strike as text. But Terrifying, Immune to Influence, Ruthless, Harmless, etc. could all use icons. Hell, great place to put them would be the artwork section itself. You have just moved every info onto it, saving space elsewhere on the card. And if you do this and they are all easily referenced in the rulebook, it means if there IS an icon, you KNOW exactly where to reference it. No searching for what Lifer means. (Providing the book is written well)

If I got my extra special redesign wish, it would be for the cards to be redesigned to fit sleeves/top loaders instead of needing special consideration. (And whatever they do with cards, my wish would be they don't get folded. Man do I hate that. Such a pain getting them laminated)

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I don't play warmachine, so I don't know the icons, but the nearest I can think of is the card game Race for the Galaxy. Now I play lots of games from all sorts of genre, but I could just not get the Race for the Galaxy symbols to stick in my head. Its taken at least a year for me to start to work out what they meanenough to get them at a glance.

A game using a very similar mechanic, Glory to Rome, I got on my first play.

SO Symbols all over the place aren't the answer to me. And whilst the Rules manula index is pretty poor in a few places, it was a vast improvement over book 1 and it is pretty good for most things. Lifer is badly done.

I will fully admit I don't like change, and still don't like the new magic card style over the old

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Interesting, while I'll admit that Race for the Galaxy looks confusing on the first playthrough, after a game or two I've found it to flow really smoothly. And I agree with Alviaran on the kind of thing to put into icons. Common, shared abilities that frequently only show up as the name anyway. You could include things like Undead, Living (please include that), Woe, Horror, Construct, etc.

Now it would require some good design to make it all work, but the current cards can certainly be improved. Just having them not fold would be great, even better if they could be some sort of standard size. (or even better if, as a bonus, like in Infinity I can have all the info I need to play in a wiki and army builder app I can stick on my tablet. I suppose the Warroom does something like that for PP games?)

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I hate the idea of icons replacing text. actively despise it.

Probably in part because every time a computer program or game has attempted to do so, it has made my life a living hell trying to figure out how to do the thing i was able to do easily before. It is not intuitive. it is not helpful.It is annoying, and if it were done in a 2.0, I would not play Malifaux 2.0.

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. It is not intuitive. it is not helpful.

I'm going to have to disagree with that. Having an icon next to your willpower to say you are Immune to Influence or Stubborn or next to a weapon denoting it's magical or ignores armour or similar is both of those things. It puts all the relevant information together in one spot, rather than having it listed several different places. Sure, most of us can remember all of these things with a bit of practice, but there is nothing wrong with having the information right there at a glance. And yes, it means I have to learn what the icons mean, but I also have to learn what magical, or ITP, etc. means so it's really no different.

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I hate the idea of icons replacing text. actively despise it.

Probably in part because every time a computer program or game has attempted to do so, it has made my life a living hell trying to figure out how to do the thing i was able to do easily before. It is not intuitive. it is not helpful.It is annoying, and if it were done in a 2.0, I would not play Malifaux 2.0.

Bitter much? So, you're telling me you don't play Malifaux 1.0-1.5? Because you certainly learned four new icons there!

The best implementation of icons I've seen all have something in common: accessibility. Why can't you put the icon next to the stat (we already do it with suits) and in the abilities portion with the associated text? That way for vets it's still at-a-glance but for new players they have somewhere to look it up.

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Bitter much? So, you're telling me you don't play Malifaux 1.0-1.5? Because you certainly learned four new icons there!

The best implementation of icons I've seen all have something in common: accessibility. Why can't you put the icon next to the stat (we already do it with suits) and in the abilities portion with the associated text? That way for vets it's still at-a-glance but for new players they have somewhere to look it up.

THere is a massive difference between making every common ability an icon, and having a few things be icons. half a dozen symbols vs. 20-30 symbols is a matter of scale. That being said, I would vastly prefer if they just wrote the darn things out. I stand by my statement that icons make things less accessable.

As for 1.0/1.5:

4 suits, with the same symbol as the cards, which have no words on them. not an issue of replacing explicit text with an icon.

5 factions symbols: irrelivant. use colors and text on the card to determine faction. rerely pay any attention whatsoever to the icon

aura/pulse/blast:slightly useful, but only because typing it out would make damage lines difficult. also, because they are not abilioties, but part of most abilities, there is some justification in adding them to the list. I'd still prefer them written out.

ranged/melee: honestly, these are a problem even without icons. too many spells at range that aren't spells, multiple versions of cards with/without the symbols. the whole thing is an annoying mess, and the icons just make it worse.

chi: you can't fit 3 letters in? seriously?

Positive/negative flip: they have the - and + in them. they require little explanation, but still a bit more than they really should. excusable due to space.

On the other hand, a large part of my hatred for words being replaced by pictures is almost certainly due to the growing trend among computer programs and websites to represent everything with pictures which are confusing at best and downright maddening at worst. I hold that there is a special place in hell for the people who inflicted the "ribbon" on Microsoft word.

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Clippy? DOn't know a ribbon thing, but I do not really use Word much.

I think a lot of reaction was more to your "absolute" of quitting Malifaux if there were ever symbols without knowing anything about how it could be done.

This is not intended as an insult, just an analogy. My wife can cook a vegetable dish and tell my son that he is having onions and Broccoli and spinach for dinner and he will basically say that he would rather starve than eat because he hates vegetables.

Then he is forced to try the dish and likes it.

Without knowing anything other than someone saying symbols, you had my son's "vegetable" reaction from when he was about 6 years old.

I hope you can understand why some people might respond as they did.

You clearly do not like what you have seen to this point in other games in how symbols were used or made. That's cool. You don't have to.

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I apologise if I seemed rude or too vehement. I've not been in a good mood this morning.

To be honest, I probably didn't explain myself well. My objection isn't inherently against the use of any symbols, just the expansion to most if not all common abilities. This isn't a case of saying I don't like vegetables. It's more akin to saying "the smell of broccoli makes me nauseous. If it is mixed in small pieces with other foods, like a well mixed broccoli alfredo, then I can stomache it, but if it is in large chunks, it will ruin the food for me. and make me gag."

I much prefer if outside of the core rules, everything needed to play a model is on that model's card. the use of symbols is contrary to that in a way that I believe, based on previous experience would make things more difficult to play, and far less fun.

to continue the vegetable dish analogy, might I miss out on a dish I would like? it's possible, but I am far less likely to miss a dish I'd like than to miss one that would make me gag. In that event, I'll find something else to eat.

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But I think you have hit the main point here, if Wyrd does it right, the symbols should enhance not detract. As someone else said, putting the icons near the relevant stats (kind of how they highlight with a colour stats that have triggers) would be great. Do you know how many times I have seen someone lose a WP duel by 1 and then two minutes later chime in, "I have Stubborn". How do you fix that game state when you are already an activation or two down the road? Having to look down not only your stat but your card as well is annoying. And for new players, they don't often remember what those abilities even mean. If I am going after their WP and they have an icon next to their WP stat, they are more likely to ask, "What does this mean?" while we are resolving it.

And that is one of the big things I think people are missing. Do you not trust Wyrd to do it right? Like I said, Book 4 gives me hope for a 2.0, that it will be an improvement on the game and rules. They've learned a lot. I learned, again from Warmachine, that when a company has a history of doing things more or less well, give them the benefit of the doubt until you see the final result. In Warmachine, I've seen (in order) these things listed as going to DESTROY THE GAME FOREVER until they got released: epic warcaster/character jacks, cavalry, dragoons, theme forces (ha!), battle engines, colossals and now, upcoming, the new faction. None have ruined the game yet. Did Ten Thunders and the dragoon Master ruin Malifaux? Nope. Did Avatars ruin Malifaux? Nope. One can argue they missed the point, but they did not ruin the game (and I do feel the game is better for the Avatars we got if only because some Masters I think became more common where they had been kind of discarded before).

It's been years since Book 2 and its brokenness which was closer to ruining the game. They've learned. I expect that if they did adopt symbols and redesign the cards, they'd be much better designed overall and would enhance the game. I trust Wyrd's design to not screw it up.

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But I think you have hit the main point here, if Wyrd does it right, the symbols should enhance not detract. As someone else said, putting the icons near the relevant stats (kind of how they highlight with a colour stats that have triggers) would be great. Do you know how many times I have seen someone lose a WP duel by 1 and then two minutes later chime in, "I have Stubborn". How do you fix that game state when you are already an activation or two down the road? Having to look down not only your stat but your card as well is annoying. And for new players, they don't often remember what those abilities even mean. If I am going after their WP and they have an icon next to their WP stat, they are more likely to ask, "What does this mean?" while we are resolving it.

And that is one of the big things I think people are missing. Do you not trust Wyrd to do it right? Like I said, Book 4 gives me hope for a 2.0, that it will be an improvement on the game and rules. They've learned a lot. I learned, again from Warmachine, that when a company has a history of doing things more or less well, give them the benefit of the doubt until you see the final result. In Warmachine, I've seen (in order) these things listed as going to DESTROY THE GAME FOREVER until they got released: epic warcaster/character jacks, cavalry, dragoons, theme forces (ha!), battle engines, colossals and now, upcoming, the new faction. None have ruined the game yet. Did Ten Thunders and the dragoon Master ruin Malifaux? Nope. Did Avatars ruin Malifaux? Nope. One can argue they missed the point, but they did not ruin the game (and I do feel the game is better for the Avatars we got if only because some Masters I think became more common where they had been kind of discarded before).

It's been years since Book 2 and its brokenness which was closer to ruining the game. They've learned. I expect that if they did adopt symbols and redesign the cards, they'd be much better designed overall and would enhance the game. I trust Wyrd's design to not screw it up.

I agree with you here. I think most people's concerns about the dreaded 2.0 are basically fears. They may or may not trust Wyrd, but they like the game now, and even if they admit there are things that need fixing, they are afraid that an overhaul might ruin the game, and don't want to take the chance of ruining a game they have invested time and money in.

I think it will happen, and if it's done well everyone will be relieved and happy and not be mad about the changes. But for now, while it's still all conjecture, they are reluctant to be excited about something that they fear could be terrible.

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I like symbols when used correctly.

Things I think symbols would be useful for:

Ranged/Melee + Magical/non Magical (glowy?)

Aura/Pulse/Blast

Suits

Faction

Mounted/Dismounted

Things I don't think symbols would be useful for:

Characteristics

Immunities

Triggers

Not everything needs a symbol, but symbols used for basic things are really a boon. Most of the symbols I listed above as useful are already in the game.

I agree with Draco to an extent though, we don't need a symbol for the "Flay" trigger or "Critical Strike."

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Note: not saying anything will ruin the game forever. Just saying this is something which I do not want, and which, if implemented, is likely to lead to me failing to continue playing this game. no big loss, I guess, as I'm only one player, and not even a henchman. still, it's something to be aware of.

Now, you might think I'm exaggerating. But I'm pretty stubborn, and can hold a grudge over things that others think are meaningless. I quit Gmail over their site redesign a year and a half ago, despite the fact it had been my email address for 10 years, and every site I used had been signed up for using that address. I deleted the account, stopped using google, and uninstalled chrome, over the fact I perceived them as being utterly deaf to my concerns. I quit Dungeons and Dragons online for much the same reasons. I haven't looked back at facebook since timeline was forced upon me.

I don't know that I trust anyone to do this concept well--I know Malifaux would try, and they have a decent track record, but-- as the stock people say, past performance is no guarantee of future success.

To say I wouldn't play a 2.0 at all is probably an overstatement, but to say that it would have to work extremely hard to impress me enough to keep playing it, and not just find someone who uses the 1.0/1.5 rules and old models(or stop playing entirely and sell the hundreds of dollars worth of models I've bought) is entirely within the realms of what I would do. I know myself, I know generally what I like, and if Malifaux stops providing it, I'll stop supporting Malifaux.

I never meant this to be a vitriolic hyperbolic rant, BTW. It wasn't intended to be a "i'm rage-quitting" despite the tone--as I said, I was in a bad mood when I wrote it(Some expensive electronics broke last night, not enough sleep, other stress you neither need nor care to hear about) and my response was far less imprudent than I usually try to be, and more reactionary than thought out.

That doesn't change the context of my statement, however. The extensive use of symbols to represents abilities is exactly the opposite direction of what I want to see in Malifaux, and it would not make the game better, In my opinion, in any way greater than the amount by which it would make it worse. I've been wrong before, so I'd give it a chance, but it had better be good from the first part of that chance, as I'd be unlikely to give it a second. It seemed important to make a statement to that effect given the number of people chiming in about how great the use of symbols is, on the off chance that anyone who might be involved in making decisions at Wyrd read the thread and thought, "This is something everybody wants."

Again, I apologies for the hyperbole, and the emotional response, as they did far less to make my point, and more to antagonize people. I do try to avoid that.

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Meh, we'll just have to see. I generally try and refrain from "GAME VERSION X.X SPECULATION THREADS!" in every game I play - they're ubiquitous and irrelevant but the icons issue piqued my interest.

Whatever is done - be it book 5, new rule books, whatever I hope it improves Malifaux and doesn't detract from what we already love. We don't need another D&D 4e on our hands here.

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Meh, we'll just have to see. I generally try and refrain from "GAME VERSION X.X SPECULATION THREADS!" in every game I play - they're ubiquitous and irrelevant but the icons issue piqued my interest.

Whatever is done - be it book 5, new rule books, whatever I hope it improves Malifaux and doesn't detract from what we already love. We don't need another D&D 4e on our hands here.

*BLACK ABYSMAL RAGE BREWING IN THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF A MONSTERS SOUL* did some one mention DnD 4e? one know that doing so invokes death to speak of "it who must not be named" will bring it back from the hole it dug for itself.

OT i dont care for who says what when for rumors. when i see it i will see it and when i play it i will find my gripes then.

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