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| VS 2PCG $10k Thread; Predict and discuss the meta | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 30 2015, 10:21 PM (3,273 Views) | |
| BatHulk | Aug 6 2015, 03:46 PM Post #31 |
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Great tourney report: http://vsheadquarters.com/tournament-reports/almost-incredible-a-hulk-gencon-report The thought processes during testing and the different interactions during the tournament tells me this game is just as interesting/complex as OVS. Kirk's last paragraph makes me think this version of Vs is actually better (in my opinion):
I like that it retains the flavor of the powers... now only if teams mattered rather than splashes but Scott's article mirror my opinion in that the meta is still evolving so we can't truly know the pros/cons of 2PCG for at least a few months: http://vsheadquarters.com/strategy/the-first-step-into-a-larger-world
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| x_chan | Aug 6 2015, 11:22 PM Post #32 |
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I'm really concerned about what Kirk is talking about. That he wasn't never a VS fan was obvious from the start, but I wouldn't be so keen about giving kudos to Danny and Ben yet. The game has 16 MC and 72 different cards. They can do something temathic because the pool is quite reduced. And it seems they will keep it that way as only 150 cards will be made per year. If the game had the amount of cards the OVS had per expansion, and team affiliations were relevant, I'm pretty sure most of the cards would be less flavourful and more plain and simple to prevent bad interactions or improve a team theme. That's why teams will never matter, as doing so will force them to increase consistency and think the cards and characters through. I mean, the only reason Hope is not broken is that there are not enough cards in the game to abuse, the only reason characters can have temathic powers is that the game doesn't care about what team they are from or deck consistency (there's no team theme or mechanic, not a joined effort, so characters are treated as solo cards, and consistency has been removed to let 10 years all luck out wins) and the only reason the characters feel important is because there's no others to compare them with and once future expansions and better MC get released, few people will play with the existing ones. We can see that already out of 200 people, only 2 played Spider-man and only 5 played Wolverine. Both pretty popular characters, but their powers can't compete with other better MC. Once the meta is stablish, fewer MC will see play.
We might never get enough cards to raise those issues up, as with the current format and release schedule, it will take them at least 30 years to have the same amount of cards OVS had. But comparing a set of 72-100 cards to a game with 4,500+ cards and saying they are more flavourful is just stupid. I could perfectly choose 100 cards from OVS with more or similar flavour than the ones 2PCG has. |
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 05:09 AM Post #33 |
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@x_chan: But that's why that type of model didn't work for Vs... characters didn't matter and were less flavorful. So what you are expressing as a problem or issue, to me is a benefit. Only the pros will care about which MC is the optimal one, casual players will play their favorite characters and can win more games than OVS because of the added luck factor and different engine. I can't tell you how many bad decks I've seen because the player was a comic fan of that particular character and they just wanted it to work. In 2PCG, it can if they are playing other casual players. You can't just look at this from one perspective, you have to take everything into account... from the kitchen table to the hobby store to the $10k. #NegativeNancy #ImMakingADeadpoolDeckBecauseReasons :) |
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| x_chan | Aug 7 2015, 05:53 AM Post #34 |
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lol It seems that neither the devs or you have knowledge of the existence of the OVS Legends era. You keep complaining the decks were not hero focussed, while after the Legends sets, popular heroes were the focus of almost each team. Sure they came too late to the party, and they game was already dying by then, but I think it was a lot better than this MC itineration, as there were heroes and cards that interact with each other (Luke Cage got stronger if Iron Fist was around, FF4 were all about family and the core members, Hulk was all about raw power and cared about no one, etc.) So in that line, let me point to you that OVS Deadpool Legend stuff is awesome. You should try it. His double legend deck with Cable, called Bossom Budies, is one of the strongest decks out there, but almost everything from MEV is. But like you say, it's a matter of prespective. OVS was all about team effort. Characters reinforced each other and had a common goal. Every card mattered. New VS is all about individuals. MC is the "focus" of the game and the rest are just fooder. No matter what team they are from, they will serve as shields or hunters, without real interaction to each other. I'm just more into teams and card interactions. That's all. I was just pointing out that if they had a release schedule similar to the OVS, they will have to start introducing less known characters into the mix and tone down the powers to avoid bad interactions, which would make characters less flavourful. As long as they keep the pool of cards small and the matches luck based, they will have no problem with it. Like you say, any deck can win now, as luck is a major factor. But saying there were no hero focused decks in the OVS that could win at the kitchen table is just a big fat lie. Edited by x_chan, Aug 7 2015, 05:54 AM.
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 02:44 PM Post #35 |
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@x_chan: If I recall correctly, you don't live in the US... so the meta there may be vastly different from the meta here. I don't recall Legends being as successful as you: 1. It was a format, and while we did have some tournaments using it, most just wanted the regular open OVS format. 2. Your "Legend" wasn't in play, fighting the entire game, so calling a deck "focused" on a Legend, when it merely meant you had to have 12 cards referencing a character name, doesn't really mean it was a [insert character name here] deck. 3. Not every "Legend" was playable (ie winnable) because of the way the Vs engine was constructed that favored skill over luck. That's not a big fat lie... I'm a big Batman mark and I could not get a good Batman Legend deck (or Superman for that matter) to win more than lose. The older Batman combo deck was better than what came out of DC Legends. The point being that even with Legends, it still came down to the engine as a barrier for casual players. Although... the jury is still out on how complex the 2PCG engine really is. And I think you are agreeing with me on certain points because I did say "now only if teams mattered". But if you break it down... do people gravitate towards teams or characters? You will only see teams mentioned for characters that are team-based like FF, Avengers. X-Men and Justice League. But you will find more people interested in running Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Wolverine, Iron Man decks (not so much a Thing deck or a Human Torch deck :) ). From your perspective, as a combo deck player and someone who prefers the complexity of the OVS engine, you will obviously favor the Legends variation... but as I said, from a casual perspective... the MC format is easier to digest. For any of you who played WoW, how does 2PCG compare? Some of my friends are saying this is really just WoW 2.0 and they didn't like WoW but considering that WoW was really Vs 2.0, isn't this more like Vs 3.0? |
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| KardKrazy | Aug 7 2015, 02:55 PM Post #36 |
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You misunderstood x-chan BH. He wasn't referring to the format Legends. He was referring to MVL, DCL, MUN, and MEV which in fact did spawn some extremely powerful decks based off certain characters (although shouldn't really include MEV in there as a good chunk of those cards were just straight up broken due to lack of play testing). |
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 04:54 PM Post #37 |
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Okay... but even not using the Legends format, not all of those characters were viable as a deck. And the point is, that "Legend" character isn't in play at all times... with 2PCG, your main goal is to keep your MC alive and KO your opponents KO so they are overtly the focus of the deck (although not necessarily the strategy or the theme which if I were trying to be a Nancy, I would harp on). I agree that I don't like the splashiness of 2PCG. Seems like Mantis would be in most decks. They could have done Loyalty here because unlike Vs, your MC will always be in play thus you will always have X affiliation and it would encourage on-team mono builds. Her power should have been restricted to "only if you control another Guardians character". But really... in the end... Vs is back. It may not be OVS but as I said long ago, I didn't think they would ever bring it back (well... in OVS form) so I just want to try it out, play it and deal with it. I had tons of complaints about OVS, but it was still the primary game I played, supported and sold for all those years and while I may not be in the business anymore, I think I can still enjoy this iteration. BTW: If anyone is in the SoCal area, we are going to be throwing down some 2PCG at the new Majestix location on Tuesday 8/11 (maybe Kariggi can just come by with some OVS decks and we can play a few games of that too). |
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 04:58 PM Post #38 |
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Oh and if you think I'm all rainbows and puppy dogs... I still don't know if I like the location/mana as a one use resource... especially the discard from hand mechanic. I understand it's a surprise factor but it's just a bit weird to me... as if you can play lands from your hand in MtG to pay for spells. |
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| x_chan | Aug 7 2015, 07:16 PM Post #39 |
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Again, it's just a matter of perspective. I simply can't call a [insert character name here] deck when 60-80% of the deck are splashes and have no real interactions with the MC. To me those are thematic decks (agro, control, ramp, etc.) with the most youseful MC splashed in. And I'm not gonna argue about every MC being winnable in the new format as they don't really matter that much. But old Legends were winnable too, just not in the competitive scene, but sure in the kitchen table. And regarding Batman, you should have tried harder. Batman negation decks were one of the strongest decks from the last modern age format (DWF-MUN). Maybe it wasn't able to compete against Golden Age formats, but Golden Age was broken from the start, and most of it due to bad design on the first sets (which Danny is to blame in part). The Legends era tried to ammend a lot of the mess caused by the bad designs of the first few decks (introduction of the legend cards, streamlined text, few keywords, better template, etc.). To me VS2PCG would have been a better experience had they tried to build it upon Marvel and DC Legends sets and released it with the new LCG format (for easy availability). I wouldn't be against them flattening the stats to reduce the hitting the curve importance, chanhging how range worked with the strike back mechanic and even introducing energy cards to balance some of the strongest habilities and reduce (or make them energy based) the number of tutors to increase the luck of the matches (now that I think about it, I would love to try and do a Marvel/DC Legends 2.0 fan made set that contemplate some of those additions). But unfortunatelly that didn't happen. This was in playtesting long before the GenCon announcement last year. They never meant to bring VS back, they wanted WoW back, hence why they took the WoW mechanics as their core game, and why people refer to this as WoW 2.0 instead. They just splashed few VS stuff in there after they milk enough money from the VS community with false pretenses. Just as a side note. Danny doesn't gime me lots of confidence when he has already admited that even with less than 100 cards made, he would have never imagined some of the card interactions that he saw happened during the 10k. That's not someone I would put in charge of a full 255 card set each 3-4 months. Luckily for everyone involved, there will only be 150 cards per year. I hope those are enough to keep the game balanced and you guys playing. Edited by x_chan, Aug 7 2015, 07:24 PM.
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 07:47 PM Post #40 |
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@x_chan: I think I asked this question before and I don't think you answered but have you ever done game design? It's not as easy as you explain it to be. It's easy to throw rocks from the rooftops but show me what you've done on the ground and let's critique it. |
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| x_chan | Aug 7 2015, 08:36 PM Post #41 |
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I don't know what that has to do with anything. I didn't saw any rule about only designers were allowed to discuss the new game. But if there's one, I appologize. |
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| Wallywest1988 | Aug 7 2015, 09:19 PM Post #42 |
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I agree. The added randomness makes every MC playable to some level. A more consistant game would be harder to balance AKA old VS. I like the engine but it was rather frustrating losing 2 games in the 10k for reasons I couldn't control. |
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| Badmojojojo | Aug 7 2015, 09:21 PM Post #43 |
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x_Chan I have to disagree with you on a lot of your points. Legend decks towards the end of OVS were not very thematic nor fun. Bosom Buddies was so overpowered it required errata/banning. It was the most boring deck to play against ever made hence the nickname it was given: Solitaire. Other powerful decks abused Enemy of my Enemy. This one card made team ups abusable. It was great for $10k tournaments, but bad for the game in general and bad for theme teams. I think theme will always be held accountable to the player and not the game. If Player 1 wanted to run Magneto and Thor together without a team up he could still win just not as consistently in OVS. Now he can do it and be guaranteed to see at least one of those guys in play every game. One of my favorite OVS decks is Black Bolt discard abuse. Not one part of it is thematic, but all the cards have synergy making for fun ways to abuse the team stamps. None of the characters may have ever seen one another in the comics though. That feels similar to the Star Lord deck I saw listed at this year's Gen Con for 2PCG. |
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| BatHulk | Aug 7 2015, 10:02 PM Post #44 |
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No apology necessary and maybe it's just me but all your posts come off as you know what's best and that the designers and the rest of us do not. Yet, in order to qualify your opinion, I think you should have some design experience to actually know what it takes to design and develop a game. Being a good player or a player who can win big tournaments isn't enough... being able to create cards, develop their interactions with the nuances of the game mechanics is not easy. You are criticizing Danny Mandel but I've read enough of his articles and communicated with him to say that he probably knows way more about design and development than you think. Your take on Legends is unique in that many thought it wasn't enough and there were Legends that just did not work. That's why subsequent sets just threw that direction out the window and we got the borken sets in the end (which I blame Yip and Zonos for). Maybe I'm reading it wrong or maybe it's your style of writing (since tone cannot be conveyed properly in written form), but no one is perfect... except for Carlos The Dwarf. |
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| Sparowl | Aug 8 2015, 01:05 AM Post #45 |
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The concept that a person must have personal, professional or trained experience within a field in order to have a respectable opinion on the product produced by the field is a logical fallacy. An individual with no experience in a field can still point out flaws in the product or work of that field, through normal observation or use of the product - e.g. A person who isn't an architect can still point out when a bridge is falling apart due to lack of supports. In fact, some game companies take the high level competitors and let them do beta testing for new product, specifically so that they can learn where problems may exist. If criticism can only be done by industry insiders, then very quickly "Echo Chamber" will be the name of the game. |
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