I agree with all that.. which is part of the reason I believe the game still has a chance in the market. At least locally, we have brought a lot of players back thanks to the level of fun involved with MTU. It's great for limited; great for constructed; and people will no longer laugh at you for trying to build Spiderman and Underworld decks :).

I don't even think it's great for veterans.

The hyper-card drawing and tutoring and recursion make VS games essentially solitaire. A deck is hands-down better than another and will win, as long as you don't screw it up.

And that is a bad game design, which VS suffers from entirely too much, I'm afraid.

When I ask some of the guys at my store why they stopped playing, their answer is nothing but a simple shrug and "It's just not fun anymore." I believe it was making sets like legionares and heralds, teams no one really knows nothing about, in my opinion, if people play the game, it's obvious they're going to want to play the people they read in the comics, Batman, Spider Man, Avengers, Superman, etc etc. I'm trying to get a good friend of mine into the game and he immediately tells me "I want to play X men" That's fine but he's going to throw his hands up and want to quit when his X men deck gets smashed by something like QuickFate.

I also think a big part of it is just the people, some people lose, and just quit, others, lose and see it as a way to learn. I personally don't know, the players that have been quitting at the store I work at were very good ones, one of them ranked in the top ten in Texas. So i really don't know.

Why is this?

Have any of you ever bought Back issues for comics???

It is a pain!!!! & is downright costly.

How many of you have picked a comic book title over another just because it just started & skiped a better title just because there were too many pricey back issues???

My point is that if a new player was going to get started in Tcg's he would probably pick wow just becuase they only have 1 set out right now. Versus has so many sets out that it would overwelm i new player just as it would overwelm someone buying comic backissues.


Luckily for comics there are trade paper backs!!!!

However there are no trade paper backs for versus!!!!

the soultion then is to make something like a trade paper back for versus.

The ones i saw quit the most were the ones tired of losing with their favorite decks. They would build something like superman or batman and just constantly get crushed by something better like squad or checkmate.

How do you fix this? Well from what i understand UD has already recognized this as a major problem which is why the next few sets are going to be inherantly easier to play and with more mainstream characters.

Thats good.

What about untill then though? Thats going to take place over the next year and how many players could be lost (or not gained) before then?

I suggest 2 things...
1. BAN! Eratta! BAN! Eratta! Start banning the cards you see people complaining about. Everyone clearly wants quicksilver fixed and UD would have to be blind to have not noticed that by now. I would like to see EoE gone as well to restore teams back to the metagame like the old days.

2. I check in on yugioh from time to time and i notice they are CONSTANTLY releasing stuff in between sets. They always have a new starter or some other kind of pack thingy keeping interest. They recognize people have a short attention span and just keep feeding them with newer and newer cards. We get EAs of cards we already have but in order to get NEW cards we have to wait for sets. Starter deck cards have all been worthless thus far except for a teaching aid. (i'm beginning to think that most people no longer care about EAs and would rather have more legacy cards)

By the way.... when was our last 10k? November?

When Superman came out I playtested team supes for over 6 months. I tried every conceivable build possible. THe decks to beat then were titans, curve sents & x stall.

After an overwhelming amount of testing I found that no supes deck or any team up supes deck could consistently beat those 3 decks.

I almost quit versus right then and there.

I agree with you shadman! the fact that your friend cannot just play x-men kinda sucks & i know how it feels. X-men mental isn't a bad deck though. However it doesn't allow you to play wolvie!!!

you do know what umaga stands for right, in the words of the rock, "shriveled up monkey penis" hahaha.

Yugioh still has Regionals/Nationals/Worlds... it's not just about the money... it's about the competition aspect.

And MtG has THE PRO TOUR (and other money events).

Even The Spoils, Pokemon and Naruto have better mid-level support right now.
Uh... this is probably because like I said... VS it too complex. I enjoy Chess... but many people don't think it's fun.
Bad IP is one thing... blaming a good toolbox search card is another. One of the biggest problems before were people complaining that you couldn't run team-up decks (remember when Sents and Titans were vogue?). So they print Enemy which helps this... and now people are complaining that mono-teams aren't viable. Finicky!
Sure... but what tournaments are you going to play these Structure decks in?

Then even more appropriate [looks down].

Hey... but I bet Umaga doesn't have a spin-move to offhand shot like I do.

I don't think EomE needs to be necessarily banned, but I do think UDE should focus on making teams viable on thier own, I know it's a hard thing to do with so many cards out already, but that is where the focus should go, when they make a character they need to take a good look and try to figure out whether it can be "broken" when used with anything else, but again, that's quite a mountain to climb.

See, I believe the easy access card drawing is the way the game NEEDS to go if it wants to have skill. Even I didn't have fun at PC Australia, where I (and all my opponents) searched somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5 times a turn.

I think card drawing lets you eliminate the luck factor (which in my mind is a "good thing", even if it does create a small barrier to newer players), without degenerating the game into 10-minute "search turns" and making hyper-consistant combo decks. I don't like Ego Gem; but the inclusion of solid card drawers on all major teams for MTU was a great step forward.

And I really do believe making certain all "A" level teams are playable is a huge step. Hell, there are a ton of Arkham-wannabe players biting at the chomp, hoping and praying that one of the best SuperVillian teams ever assembled becomes playable next set the way Spiderman became playable this set.

I dont want to go off on another tangent of why eoe should be banned or not. I just wanted to clarify that i dont think the card is overly powerful, but it does provide a very stale, uninteresting, lack luster metagame of teams with random characters splashed from everywhere. It's no fun which is the problem at hand.

And yes, obviously people need places to play. However i think if UD allowed a City Championship at each store ONCE A MONTH. That would compensate for having a PCQ every 3 months. Especially if prizes can stay on a decent scale.
(something other than EAs, they just aren't worth anything anymore)

Ah ok, yeah I see what you mean, EomE is I suppose one of the sources behind the multi-team decks, which is a big thing that certain people hate.

OH didn't you hear? Apparently their theme for next set is DISCARDING RANDOMLY FROM YOUR OWN HAND! Obviously an expert only team next time around. How about Team Superman you have to play blind folded? Or maybe Gotham Knights you need to open a vein each time you want to attack.