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Dissappointed in Wyrd. FAQ


Mentat_Canis

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Hey, if we're reprinting cards, can we drop Silurids to 6 points so they're actually worthwhile? I thought Justin said they were getting a boost or change at some point.

That's a topic for a different thread....but I disagree. They are totally worthwhile in my Marcus crews. Pick them for the correct schemes. I had one last night....it delivered the message for 3 VP AND removed 3 scheme markers near my DZ that would have scored 4 VP for my opponent (3 VP for 2 Markers for an announced Plant Evidence and 1 VP for Breakthru)......I'd say that was well worth my 7ss investment.

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That's a topic for a different thread....but I disagree. They are totally worthwhile in my Marcus crews. Pick them for the correct schemes. I had one last night....it delivered the message for 3 VP AND removed 3 scheme markers near my DZ that would have scored 4 VP for my opponent (3 VP for 2 Markers for an announced Plant Evidence and 1 VP for Breakthru)......I'd say that was well worth my 7ss investment.

Reminds me of a game I had in 1.5 where a single Crooligan destroyed all 3 evidence markers and claimed my breakthrough scheme, while doing what was essentially a half-lap of the board... It was glorious.

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Perfect reason to publish the rule books in the iBooks text book format. Then just roll your updates directly into the core rule book. Granted you still need the paper to get to everyone but for organized play the one stop shopping of the electronic, regularly updated, format can not be beat.

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Perfect reason to publish the rule books in the iBooks text book format. Then just roll your updates directly into the core rule book. Granted you still need the paper to get to everyone but for organized play the one stop shopping of the electronic, regularly updated, format can not be beat.

Pretty sure that's a pipe dream.

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Pretty sure that's a pipe dream.

I wish I thought you were wrong. I think you are right, but I for one would be ecstatic to find they were releasing a properly formatted, cross indexed, and linked Ebook, even if it were only Kindle format.

Even more so if they released an app to make my game easier.

Oh, well. If they must remain only dreams...

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind

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I'd be a lot more pleased about these bimonthly updates if I believed they'd be used as little more than cuddles to whatever is considered popular that month. It just seems to open the door for a lot of kneejerk overreacting to whatever beat you last. The attitude around here seems to be way to accepting of just immediately calling something "OP" rather than seeing if it's really too strong, or looking for answers in other ways. Also in my experience, cuddles fly a lot easier than any buffs would towards things that are weaker.

And of course there is a chance that some things will be missed in playtesting, and I'm not even that the cuddles that were released were bad. But I do think it's worrisome when a book that's been released roughly six weeks is already apparently deemed to have had game-breaking issues. The other issue is even if you know something is too strong, it may not even be the something you initially believe.

Also if they are going to be bimonthly faqs/cuddles, I would also think some sort of epub format would be appreciated. As of now, there's only a small handful of cards that have been changed, and a few minor rule tweaks. But what happens after 6 months of these updates? Will I need a loose-leaf binder to drag along with my rule manual, and my still-relevant cards?

Edited by alansmithee
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I'd be a lot more pleased about these bimonthly updates if I believed they'd be used as little more than cuddles to whatever is considered popular that month. It just seems to open the door for a lot of kneejerk overreacting to whatever beat you last. The attitude around here seems to be way to accepting of just immediately calling something "OP" rather than seeing if it's really too strong, or looking for answers in other ways.

Disagree........no offense intended, but that attitude seems more kneejerk than what Wyrd is doing. I think it's a little early to be saying that Wyrd is going to create a loose-leaf binder's worth of changes in 6 months. Honestly, people were complaining about several things, but most of those things weren't touched. Wyrd has only changed that which was well and truly deemed 'broken'. They didn't just throw all the things up on a dartboard, toss a couple of darts and say "Yee-hah, we're Cuddling Nexus this week!"

People may overreact, but Wyrd isn't.

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Disagree........no offense intended, but that attitude seems more kneejerk than what Wyrd is doing. I think it's a little early to be saying that Wyrd is going to create a loose-leaf binder's worth of changes in 6 months. Honestly, people were complaining about several things, but most of those things weren't touched. Wyrd has only changed that which was well and truly deemed 'broken'. They didn't just throw all the things up on a dartboard, toss a couple of darts and say "Yee-hah, we're Cuddling Nexus this week!"

People may overreact, but Wyrd isn't.

When you announce you will have changes to your rule system every two months, it creates expectations. It makes people more inclined to consider anything in the gameplay which doesn't fit in with however an individual feels the game should be as a flaw in the rules that needs changed, regardless of if it's actually unbalancing or not. This, coupled with what I've seen in pretty much every game ever where there's a much greater tendency to cuddle everything (and the fact that getting traction behind calls for cuddles is typically easy) rather than actually improve items that are deemed too weak, is a bad thing. The flipside is that when there aren't changes, you'll get people complaining about that as well since they've been made to expect changes every two months.

And I think the fact that there are apparently numerous things people are complaining about less than two full months after the official release would seem to indicate that my attitude isn't entirely unfounded. Two months hardly seems enough to have identified numerous issues with the system, unless the system is extremely flawed. And as for people overreacting but not Wyrd, I'd say that's not entirely accurate as Wyrd I think has demonstrated that they do take a lot of input from the community here. They may not overreact to the same extent, but if the community they listen to overreacts and they listen, it's not much different. I'm not saying it will or won't happen with certainty, but I would say that caution is advised.

I would like to actually see when changes are made, some reasoning given for them and something showing the thought process behind the changes. I did not follow the previous beta, but almost since the book was released at Gencon it seems people have been complaining about Nexus. Was this a matter of something being changed between beta testing and the book being printed, or not enough evidence given beforehand, or what? Also something to consider is that not everyone follows the forums to the same extent (or in some cases, at all). Having numerous frequent changes that must be kept up on, especially early in a game's lifespan, can cause a lot of confusion in players who suddenly find out in a tournament, or even just playing a different playgroup, that what is printed on their (relatively new) cards isn't actually how they work. And again, I clearly said I wasn't saying the cuddles were bad or unnecessary. And I do appreciate that they're at least willing to look at their rules and change things.

Also, I'm unsure if you realize this, but saying "no offense intended" isn't really a carte blanche method of getting past the requirement for civil discussion. I'd even argue the opposite-typically it's only used when what you're about to say is offensive and rather than not being offensive, you'd just prefer to dodge the consequences of being offensive. No offense intended, of course ;)

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I would like to think that over the last 4 years Wyrd has shown that it considers players views as important, but it does not bow to pressure from them, it waits until it is sure before it makes changes that it thinks are good for the game. That has certainly been my view of the Rules changes that have happened since the first book was released.

And this FAQ was released on the schedule they said at the start, over 2 and a half months from the first sellign of the book, and over 1 month from the official release. Certainly a good time to put out an FAQ.

Playtesting is done to try and find the broken combinations, and models which are too weak. It doesn't always work, some things can take a long time to be spotted as combinations.

In January I expect, at most, 1 more card errata, but most other things will be clarifications that people disagree on (Like how flight works, or are the attacks from a charge a new action, or is 0" movement a move?)

The Errata we got this time could easily have been primarily formatting issues for most of the cases (I'd have argued that Jug rocket could not have moved Ophelia anyway as once she was picked up, you couldn't place her within 8" of her as she no longer had a place). Nexus is the only one that is is a signifigant change. And I think a lot of that was during the playtest it was rarely used with damage prevention flips. (And several of the models that gain the most from it were either changed late in the beta process, or not neverborn so used less in testing).

Reading through the beta testing shows that no matter what they do there will be people that think something is overpowered/underpowered. Often it wil be exactly the same thing. Most of them will probably get looked at by Wyrd, and be decided to be fine as is. Players may complain, but unless there is sufficient evidence and that will include plenty of internal testing, they aren't going to errata.

Having spent too many hours over the last few years reading the rules forum I can see exactly why they have decided this approach. A timely, formal document that will be easy to access for the clarificatiosn that will be needed (there were some things that where written really clearly before that still had 100s of questions about) sounds like a better way than we used to have. I expect that overall there will be fewer errata than we used to have, but just as many questions.

If there are another 6 Errata in the next one, I'm still not going to be hugely worried. If there are 6 Errata every update for a year, then I might start to think the way you already are. (36 changes are still a lot lower that were done for the first or the second book over the first year. Yes, there should be a lot fewer, they've much more experience of this now)

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Also, I'm unsure if you realize this, but saying "no offense intended" isn't really a carte blanche method of getting past the requirement for civil discussion. I'd even argue the opposite-typically it's only used when what you're about to say is offensive and rather than not being offensive, you'd just prefer to dodge the consequences of being offensive. No offense intended, of course ;)

Exactly. Just like the whole, not to be racist / sexist / etc. trope. The vitriol that follows tends to be more of exactly what you said you were avoiding.

Not to be racist, but silurids are X, Y, Z, and I'll tell you why...

---------------

Do I think it is a shame that the book / cards needed an errata so quickly? Yeah, I do.

Would I rather they leave things broken and / or unclear? Not at all.

Do I think it's a bad thing to have an FAQ so soon? Also, not at all.

As second edition is still new, and we're basically teaching people how to play it from scratch, I'd rather we catch any mistakes now, instead of making lasting bad habits.

Trying to find a Rules Marshal ruling on, well, anything was a chore in last edition. Once we found it, then came the issue of people continuing to argue for or against the ruling, which, sometimes we certainly needed to, as the Marshals were not infallible (although some were certainly much better than others). After that, as the rulings did make it into an Errata or FAQ document in a timely manner (no matter how many times we asked for it), good luck with keeping a consistent ruling. Even being subscribed to the thread with said ruling, and / or having a printout of it, someone else may have asked the question from a different angle on a different pair of models, which received a completely different ruling, which then invalidated the first.

Then, there was the issue of just how long it took to address the Dreamer and Hamelin and finally providing cards with all of the changes to them and their crews, instead of having to marker them out on the cards...

So, while we'll probably still see an FAQ every two months from now until the end of time, which will eventually start covering the next book(s), we shouldn't necessarily be seeing an errata each and every time.

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Keep in mind that the Errata list was really quite small(7-8 items, about one line each) and a third of those were about typos that got through. At least 2 of those were changed because of models that haven't been released yet, but would have a broken interaction, which mad Justin and Co. look at it a bit more closely and decide it was too good for it's cost, and would hamper future development.

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Keep in mind that the Errata list was really quite small (7-8 items, about one line each), and a third of those were about typos that got through. At least 2 of those were changed because of models that haven't been released yet, but would have a broken interaction, which made Justin and Co. look at it a bit more closely and decide it was too good for its cost, and would hamper future development.

Moar typos got through... :Combat_Puppet:

At least we caught a bunch of them before it hit print. The amount that were reported throughout the beta were horrendous.

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Reasoning and thought process behind the changes is all laid out here:

http://justindrawingdead.com/?p=119

The reasoning is pretty sound all round in my opinion

Thanks a lot for pointing this out. Hearing about the details makes me feel better about the rapid change.

That said, Nexus was part of the environment in which Neverborn were balanced, and Justin seems to believe that it was a must-take Upgrade. That means that changing Nexus affects the balance of the faction as a whole, and the change has taken place after public playtesting has been completed.

Are there going to be more Faction-wide Upgrades? Having confirmed that this kind of Upgrade hasn't been playtested sufficiently in the past and is influential enough to have a card changed immediately after release, will Wave 2 Upgrades be getting attention earlier than planned?

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