You are correct... I wasn't... until pint asked me to explain why I think the way I do.
If that's how you feel.

I was just wondering if any of you would be open to still playing VS if it were simpler... like WoW. And if so... how would it play. I guess most of you are not.

I MIGHT play something with the same IP because I love comics. I came here from playing HeroClix so I do have that history.

Having said that I would be awfully pissed if they chucked the engine out the window rendering the cards I have paid for useless.

It's one thing if they lose the license and so of course the new company who decides to take up the blade redoes the engine. It's entirely different (and $h!tty) if UDE decides to start over and throw all the loyal VS players to the wolves.

Thinking about the whole how do heroes attack without a Weapon, you would probably have to add a base ATK value to each hero card, something low based on power level. Then you can augment based on Weapons. You could even give them a resource cost to attack so as a player you decide if you need to recruit, play effects or use that resource to swing.

I agree.

And it would cost more money for UDE to do this (new comp rules, R&D for new cards etc etc).

They are addressing the issues other than the game engine... too many teams and focus on recognizable characters. I think Legends is also going to have simpler effects and abilities.

Well not that anyone asked but to throw my two cents in:

I think that the prevailing attitude that i've gotten from Billy and Scott and others at UDE is that there is a plan in place to move from a more team centered basis to a more focused system of card selection (I think it's already in place just look at LSH [Darkseid, and the LSH anyone] and MTU [Spider-Man, the Defenders]).

However, I think that move is rather toward the Doom affiliation is all about Doom for the most part so the Spider Friends Afilliation should be all about Spider-Man variety and of course putting out useful versions of Spider-man helped this along quite a bit.

I expect that in WF we'll see more useful versions of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight than we've seen up to this point. However when you're making a game about Superheroes there's always going to be a team based element to it, you can't have a superhero game without groups like the JSA, JLA, Avengers, LSH, Defenders and X-Men.

Now if you're saying do we need Checkmate or X-statix or some of the other fringe groups then I tend to be inclined to agree with you. Yet, who decides who is a fringe group for what set. In the end the majority can't rule all.

I mean if you have an Infinite Crisis set that revolves around the whole Infinite Crisis thing that was going on at DC a year and a half ago and you don't have Chekmate in that set you're kinda letting down the dude on the street that wants to play out those stories or use those characters in a deck. Yet you have to make a classically underpowered group like Checkmate competetive within the context of the game, hence cards like Brother I sattelite and Ahmed.

I had more but i think i'm done with my soapbox now.

EDITED for clarity and her pleasure.

This would be really bad. I think you've revealed a lack of knowledge about how WoW's actual game engine works, not how you think it might work from the rulebook.

Look, I agree there are some good points about the WoW engine. Most reasonable folks would also. But bottom line, the two games are different.

The decline of VS has a lot more to do with how the game was handled than the game itself.

See the abysmal Web of Spider-Man and Man of Steel sets ...
See Curve Sentinels era, which drove tons of players away, including influential pros who spread the word that a trained monkey could win a PC ...
See Dr. Light running rampant and unchecked for a year ...
See Enemy of My Enemy, which changed the game into something a lot of diehard comic fans couldn't accept ...
See the utter dissolution of Hobby League and casual support ...
See the house of cards that was UDE Europe ...

The list goes on. These are much more likely the causes of VS decline than any mechanical issue with the game engine.

Yu-gi-oh is roundly criticized as the most fundamentally flawed game engine in the marketplace, but look at how it's doing.

I love VS. I want to see it continue. Speculative threads like these only help if we're talking about the good ideas VS can borrow from WoW moving forward.

I'm sorry, I forgot I wasn't allowed to have opinions here.

From now, I'm with grendelboy. Anywhere he posts, I'll be agreeing. He is right and everyone else is wrong. Please do not post if you disagree with grendelboy, as there is no end to what he knows.

Again... I never meant the exact engine... just the main ideas tweaked for a superhero environment:

• You have a main hero supported by allies.
• You can attack with your allies or your hero, your opponent can attack your allies or your hero.
• You need to have special allies to defend your hero.
• Equipment take on a different meaning here more akin to VS than the MMORPG.
• You have classes defined by powers (like "Energy, Physical, Mental, Magical... etc"), therefore giving you a 2-level hierarchy system that is more limited (and therefore easier to use) than the 50+ teams currently in VS
• You actually have to "spend" resources to use effects and abilities (cutting down on the open-ended combinations)
• Only drawing one card per turn increases the luck factor (which I don't really like but I can see the reasoning)

I realize this... this was just meant to be discussion about how would it be if they weren't.
I wanted to avoid this since I've been criticized of posting too much on that particular subject.
That has more to do with the top-deckiness of that game. Almost anyone with the correct build can beat anyone else. It's about how level the playing field is... sure some players win more than others... but they can also lose every once in a while to a casual player.
The problem here is the engine can never be changed. The only hope is in the design of the new sets. And again... this isn't what I wanted to discuss. It's not about fixing VS... it's just about the possibility of VS working under a different system.

As much as some people are sick of my threads, I'm pretty tired of the whole "VS could never do well if you changed the engine". I disagree. I've been told I can't prove that theory but there are many things in life that you can use historical data and opinions to form a fairly acceptable scenario... at least in my mind.

People are already having a negative reaction to how the Legends sets are being done... "What do you mean more character focused? Like WoW... that sucks!". Why is everyone so unyielding to change? We need to start accepting things we don't all agree on if we really do want to see this game continue.

Do we have any fans of irony here?

It's just that basically the problems with the game seems to be:

(a) The engine which is two hard to teach

(b) The property which has too much depth and thus causes too many incompatible cards and thus hurts the secondary market by not being able to have a large number of cards that are playable in a large number of decks.

So, for Vs. to live, they just need a total body transplant followed by a brain transplant.

Many people are not so much afraid of change, but afraid that the game would be completely destroyed and rebooted in an attempt to find new success. Of course, they likely aren't going to get a mulligan on it. They won't be allowed to reinvest the same money they did the first time, so they'd be fighting up hill with any reboot or huge alteration to the game.

You piss off all the existing players, you have all the players that left suspicious of being burned again, you don't have the same money to invest in trying to draw people in with the big cash prizes. Thus, you have to find people who have never heard of and/or never played Vs. and try to convince them to play the brand spanking new Vs. 2.0.

OR ....

You continue tweaking the current one, you try to keep the current base and leverage them as a marketing tool, while trying to bring the 'fun' back to the game and show the players that left that you are commited to fixing it, instead of just throwing it away and 'starting over' when things go poorly.

For the sake of discussion, not trying to flame.

Could you accept the fact that the game is doing just fine, if UDE would come here and tell you themselves? Even if you, personally, don't agree?

Didn't MTU sell out? Isn't Hellboy the bee's knees and selling very well? Didn't the City Championships seem very successful for a chaotic first run?

There is a flood of talk and excitement about many different areas of the game here in the Realms. Paul's City report was buried ten pages deep, with quality discussion on top of it.

The game looks like it is continuing very well to me. In fact, adding in the Giant-Sized set and the new website and the Hobby League playmats and more Batman on the horizon... it looks like the best year ever in terms of product.

Accept it?

However, at the same time, if we accept EVERYTHING we don't agree on ... then eventually the game ITSELF is something we don't agree on.

Save the game at ANY cost attitude is just as bad as the don't change anything attitude.

If we got Reed Richards to prove that the EXACT problem with Vs. was the DC and Marvel engine? It causes an overhead cost that requires the game to sell a lot more to be sustainable, and it also is the 'heart' of the "infinite color wheel" problem. Thus, if it takes abandoning the liscense to save the game, should we just accept that?

And if there are players that love the game BECAUSE of the engine, saving the game by eliminating the engine would be RUINING the game for those players.

Everyone plays Vs. for a reason. Changing something about Vs. might increase the potential for new players, but it will ALSO piss off older players. They like the game as it is for a REASON. Existing players should be willing to accept a completely different game, but the people not playing the game ... well for THEM we have to make the game into something they like.

Regardless ... Raw Deal has been around for SEVEN YEARS coming up at Gen Con. It has flied in the face of MANY of the 'accepted wisdom' of how a succesful game should be run. And yet ... it's still going.

I don't know how much it costs to produce Vs. and keep the IP payments going ... but it seems that while you ask people to flexible, you seem quite inflexible on Vs. not being one of the top selling games. Now, if UDE is going to drop the game if it's not selling well [which is comparing it to ITSELF ... the money they put in vs. the money they get back out of it].

It shouldn't matter what any OTHER game does [except perhaps the other games in UDE ... because they'll look at the return on investment for each game].

That's the most important factor ... Return on investment.

It shouldn't matter how well Magic or any other game is doing ... as long as Vs. has a good enough Return on Investment for Upper Deck. That is the only factor that will likely cause the game to be ended.

If the options are to make the game something I personally do not want to play, but it becomes the most succesful game ever? Well, I guess I'm selfish as I'm not willing to give up THAT much for the success of Vs.

And my attitude has been perverted. I have NEVER said "don't change anything". Never.

I simply think, strongly, that we need to change our language in discussions like this.

"Making the game better" is fine. "Improving attendance" is fine.

"Saving the game" implies a false sense of doom.

Easy fix.

Locke just got a new sig. :p

I'm not saying you said that.

I'm naming the 'hypothetical' attitude that erick is valiantly fighting against.

The windmill to his Don Quixote.

I don't think there is anyone that actually believes in changing NOTHING [a game where each set does not add ANYTHING new to the game would be horrible and stagnant]. However, he talks about fear of change ... I was merely pointing out that desperately changing things to try to fix or optimize something can be just as bad as being complacent.

Case in point:

A pre-school wanted to fix a problem of kids being picked up late. So they implemented a small fine.

The number of late pick ups went UP. Before, people felt responsible for picking up their kids on time, and would feel guilt or shame over not picking them up on time. Since the 'late fee' was negligible, they were able to afford it AND for that low price, they paid off their guilt about being late for the pick up.

When they eliminated the fee ... the late pick ups did NOT drop ... they continued. The small change was enough to change their attitude to picking up the kids late. It was no loner a 'bad' thing ... it was acceptable.

[Note: Source -> Freakonomics]