Which is why I've repeatedly tried to clarify that this wasn't what the thread was about.

You talk about "both sides having their voices heard"... well... this was in response to those voices on the Marvel Legends thread talking about how bad the game would be if it were like WoW. I even started this thread with:
And I don't think I've dimissed any single poster directly unless you count pointing out that their statements may not be correct (like stu saying that MTU has sold out), so I don't see where you got that from.

That already happens now. Team Superman can't even beat some Random Punks decks.
There are a lot of decks in VS that go against the grain of the flavor... look at High Voltage, Evil Medical School or any uber-splash deck. Every engine will have that problem somehow. I understand your concern but if I were to use your numbers, I think the 25% of the comics that focus on a main character... probably accounts for more than 50% of the sales. Which is the main reason why UDE would go that route. In fact, it's already been stated that the Legends set will try to focus on the main characters... the Legends.

Yes, and that's a fantastic idea...for a set. But, for a whole game, it just fails to excite me.

And, actually, strangely, many times it is the minor characters who outsell the big ones, especially in trades (in single issues, you are often right, though). If I recall correctly, last month, Ex Machina beat out New Avengers and Spider-Man in trade sales. A few months back, Jack of Fables and DMZ beat out JSA and New Avengers, and a month before that Fables topped the charts for TPB sales. (I just noticed, Brian K Vaughan's books almost always do really well - kick those hacks Bendis and Millar out, and let BKV take over, Marvel! Please!)

As to the decks you bring up, most of them are decks that, you are right, aren't thematic...but, I'd rather have a few unthematic decks that I have to face down than have an entire unthematic game that I could build across.

As a set, however, it gives the big characters a chance to shine, without completely trashing the characters and teams that I like. That's a much better design, to me (obviously, as I am selfish and want to enjoy the game) than pandering to only one side of the market.

Then, of course, there's the problem that the most popular characters often aren't the team leaders.

Take the X-Men: Professor X is their undisputed leader. If not him, then Cyclops. If not him, then Storm. Failing that, Emma Frost. But, many people would bee pissed because, hey, Wolverine! But, he's not a team leader. So, you'd piss off someone no matter what you did in that situation. Half the people would say, "Oh...yay...more Wolverine fan-wanking. 'Cuz I don't see enough of that in my comics." And the other half would be trying to do nothing but build around him, ignoring much less popular character like Cyclops or Storm or Emma.

There are some teams for which your idea would, undoubtably, work. However, I have never understood the mindset of completely dropping a significant portion of your audience to make one segment happy.

That's true, and had been presented as one of the barriers to entry for some new players a while back. A Batman fan will see Vs for the first time, say "Hey, they have Batman cards?", put together a Gotham Knights deck and get frustrated when he can't beat Arkham Inmates or one of the more competitive multi-team decks. Those same people would still be turned off when their favorite character's power level/abilities don't come through in ANY game engine, regardless of what it is.

I understand that any comic game will have to take liberties with power levels in order to keep things balanced, but there are other ways to deal with it besides saying "decks are based on one main character, all characters must be equal".

I took a look at the rules for Powerstorm and while it has some unneeded complexity, the basic feel of a comic book battle is there. Teams and power levels are accounted for, as are signature attacks, personalized equipment/powers and appearances by guest stars or supporting characters. I don't care for the characters used (Cyberforce and other Top Cow material) or the poker-style bidding, but I think the character system captures that "comic book feel" better than Vs. does.

Have a good one!
Jay

First thing on Google looking for diamonds comic sales charts

April 2006 sales numbers:

Top place, Infinite Crisis
Second place, Wolverine: Origins
Third: New Avengers
Fourth: Astonishing X-Men
Fifth: Justice
Sixth: Moon Knight
Seventh: New Avengers
Eighth: Amazing Spider-Man
Ninth: Teen Titans
Tenth: OMAC Project Special
11th: Uncanny X-Men
12th: X-Men
13th: Villains United Special
14th: Superman
15th: Ultimate X-Men

Ok, so we have Moon Knight, Spider-Man, Superman and Wolverine.

Three Infinite Crisis books, which are ensembles.

And the other 8 are team books [X-Men, Avengers, JLA and Titans].

That seems to be about 50% for team books, 25% for ensemble and 25% for individual heroes.

Now, the New Avengers, Justice League and X-Men all have 'big names' so it's blurry as to whether people buy it for Wolverine, or all of the X-Men, for example.

The Diamond website currently doesn't have their 'market share' information available.

However, the X-Men have always been a 'team' that sells extremely well.

Overpower, ironically enough, actually got it 'right' to a certain extent. Having ONE character only is limiting it to a certain group of comics. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine ... but someone wanting to play as the X-Men, or the Justice League, or the Avengers ... wouldn't really get that. Overpower at least gave you a team of 4 ... so you could play with 'individuals' or you could have a 'team' [ignore the actual part where thematically you probably couldn't get most teams to 'work' because the decks would suck ... if designed correctly the 4 character system could have allowed for it].

Now, they could do what they did with Overpower ... some of the 'characters' were actually teams ... You could be Superman, or you could be the Thunderbolts.

So instead of having Cyclops or Storm or Prof X ... they could have the Blue Team, the Gold Team, the Classic X-Men, etc ... for the WoW type system.

That would be one thing that would help to make it work a bit better ... and the 'allies' in that case could actually be individual members of the team working independently, instead of just all together. [Heck, they could even have an ability to get some of those allies in to play quicker, or get them into hand anyway.]

It does seem to borrow some of the more promising elements of Overpower ... in terms of starting play with the characters, and having the various stats to represent things [and the hero/villain idea that DC used]. However they are going with some form of formation, which even Overpower did ... so it does beg the question if that is inherent to comic book games ... the concept of relative position and such. I think it's in part wanting to reflect the ability of certain characters which involve flight/range. Who cares if you can fly if everyone is lined up in a row? [Magic has a good way of doing it, but I doubt we'd want flight characters to be able to attack directly if the opponent had no characters with flight] Who cares if you can shoot from far away if you have to stand up front with everyone else? [WoW admitedly does have a 'range' mechanic that would work, the long-ranged ability.]

I think that's more where erick is going with this, but I don't think it's a good idea to have an avatar be a group of people.

The avatar's not a "team leader," the avatar card is just the main character. And rarely, except in their own books, are Thunderbolts main characters.

Infinite Crisis had dozens of guys, but who were the stars? They'd have avatars. All those other guys would be the allies, and they'd be JUST as important as the avatar (something most people seem to be overlooking).

So the X-men Blue team is simulated by having Wolverine or Cyclops as your hero card, and THE PLAYER selecting allies that fit that theme. I'm not understanding the people who are saying, "I wouldn't like that game because I couldn't play as Jubilee." You could use her, she'd be an ally, just not the avatar. Just like in current VS how she'll never be the only character you use in your deck.

In WoW, allies are very valuable. Don't think that just because they sound weaker in terminology that minor characters would play no role in the game.

This is such a BS debate. If Vs did not exist, the majority of you WOULD play a well designed and fun (WOW engine) Superhero TCG regardless of game mechanics. You would play it and like it BECAUSE it was the only thing you could get. So stop arguing with Erick and try to use some of that imagination God gave you.

And another thing, I don't buy for a minute that any of you Vs "faithful" would not buy a completely new version of this game if this version went away. The only reason you're in this forum and not in some Magic forum is because this game is centered around superheroes. You're not fooling anyone so stop BSing.

I think the idea of the character card "as team" is pretty good, but that would mean more abstraction of power levels. You would wind up with Spidey (because he is a popular solo character) against X-Men Blue... who should really be winning that one? Or heaven forbid Spider-Man vs. the New Avengers. It's just a sticking point for me since I'm a fan of trying to keep power levels relatively close to where they are in comics while still providing balanced gameplay. Your mileage may vary. :)

That's a good observation, Walter, and I think the positional mechanics are just another way to represent powers that could be tied to keywords (as you mention further down). I think the crucial element here is putting characters in front of others. So much of the superhero mythos relies on the idea of protection; it just feels right to put Superman in between Green Arrow and some foe, or to have Colossus protect Shadowcat.

Long-Range is a good start for ranged characters (working similar to 5-drop Cyclops's ability), and Elusive works well for characters who are hard to pin down (or those who are Concealed). I agree with you about Magic's interpretation of Flight (or Stealth in WoW), and think it would be more thematic as "Cannot be attacked by characters without Flight or Long-Range". Protector is a shoe-in as it would let some characters take hits for the others, and as a keyword it can be placed on the most thematic characters (durable "bricks" for heroes or low-cost minions for mastermind-type villains).

Have a good one!
Jay

Ummmm no I wouldn't.

Ummm no I wouldn't...
So if I tried to play WOW (I did) and then imagine playing instead of a Hunter deck it was a Doc Ock deck (I did that too) and then imagined myself not enjoying it that does that count?


Ummmm OK

My jig is up ohhh noes!!!!

I'm going to have to say that that is quite false. I tried Vs. because of superheroes - I kept playing because the system is well-designed. I have tried other games, and I did not keep playing them, not because of spandex, but because I did not find the system fun. I am here rather than in some Magic forum because I had little to no fun playing Magic. If I find another TCG that is as fun as Vs., and find people to play it with, then, aye, I will play that, too - regardless, again, of the amount of spandex involved.

You know I have thought about this post for awhile and I guess my first memories of VS were that it was a very simple game. Turn one I put a guy into play and turned him sideways, turn two I put a guy into play I turned him sideways. Marvel Origins was a very 'simple' set overall. (to be honest I was worried about the longevity of the game) You knew that one way or another you were going to bash some people to death. Dc complicated matters with Roy Haper and that's when I recall the game took a big learning curve jump and kept on going. Decks stopped turning sideways and started being more subversive with the win conditions. It took a few sets though. (Mainly to get through the big stinkers of Web and Superman those hurt the game a hell of a lot more then complexity in my opinion) When you look at the game through the lens of these boards you can see an element of frustration over dominant non-combat oriented decks. I know the whole Lightshow fiasco lost some players also. Is this the complexity that you are talking about?

Is this really about the games ability to subvert the basic rule book concepts to win games?

As a what if idea what if the game would have produced more sets just like Origins?

Vs. + WoW - awesome = UFS

Took the words out of my mouth. Except I didn't get into VS for the superheros.

Answer and indirectly to Erick, there are some people who would play any TCG with a decent OP and people to play with. There are some people who would blindly play anygame TCG that had their spandex heros in it. Both of those would even play VS in a WoW engine.

A lot of people probably would have tried VS in a WoW engine (had VS never existed), but in the end, the majority would not keep playing a game they did not enjoy playing just because of the license.

This is very true.

With the current cardpool... the game is more complex than just the engine itself. Overall... my calls for "simplification" were never confined to a single aspect of the game. I guess to answer Access' need for clarification, what I call the "game engine" encompasses more than just the mechanics, turn steps etc... it also involves the number of archetypes, the card pool and the other intricacies that further convolute the basic aspects of VS.

I know some players whose game hasn't evolved past the Origins sets... there is a large amount of players who had quit after Origins (which could also be due to the horrible *SM sets) and a good amount of players who haven't Day 2's since 2004.

This is most probably why Legends is speculated to be more of a "back to basics" type set.