[edgeofhearing]

Welcome to Will of the Collective VII: Bottom's Up! This time around we're designing a non-unique character from the bottom up, starting with faction and ending with the story.

We've had some creative and clever ability nominations, now it is time to vote! You have two days to cast your 1 vote, and then the options that accumulated 50% of the vote will move on to round 2. Here are the contenders, with provisional (subject to playtesting) costs:

(Cost +1) When you play this personnel, if you command three personnel who cost 4 or more, s/he is cost -2.

(Cost +2) When you play this personnel, if you command three personnel, s/he is cost -3.

(Cost +1) When you play this personnel, the next or personnel you play this turn is cost -2.

(Cost +0) At the start of your turn, you may place this personnel on top of his/her owner's deck. If you do, the first card you play this turn is cost -2.

(Cost +2) When you play this personnel, for each player that commands a personnel who costs 4 or more, s/he is cost -2.

(Cost +0.5) While this personnel is present with your personnel who has a cost of 4 or more s/he gains [TWO SKILLS]

(Cost +0.5) Order - Kill this personnel to begin an engagement involving your ship at this location.

(Cost +0.5) When your or personnel present is randomly selected to be killed, you may kill this personnel to prevent that.

(Cost +1.5) When this personnel is involved in an engagement, if he/she is present with a personnel that costs 4 or more, remove him/her from the game to take the top card of your opponent's dilemma pile and place it under your incomplete non-HQ mission.

(Cost +4) When two or more of your personnel present (with a cost of 4 or more) are about to be stopped by a dilemma, you may kill this personnel to prevent that.

(Cost +1) When you play this personnel, if you command a personnel who has a cost of 4 or more, you may download a Maneuver or Temporal card.

(Cost +2) Order - If this personnel is present with two personnel with a cost of 4 or more, you may remove this personnel from the game to place up to two of your ships at a mission.

(Cost +0.5) When you play this personnel you may exchange your personnel with another personnel from your hand. Both personnel must have the same card title but a different subtitle.

(Cost +0) No ability.

[monty42]

C'mon people vote for my guy. Not only is it a fun ability but there's Trek sense behind it.
For those of you looking for a more practical application, when you use three copies of this guy to overcome three dilemmas you basically get a free mission because these guys can complete Automated Repair Station on their own.
Not to mention that with one simple engagement you can score a whopping 25 bonus points which basically means all you need to do is complete one mission the regular way.
Now imagine you wanna push the boundaries a little further, you could add Worf to use Ja'chuq and significantly ease your pain getting through that last mission.
There's an opportunity here to turn into a great, competitive deck.
So c'mon people let's go for greatness! There are enough damn generic cards already. Let's not produce another filler!

[Naetor]

C'mon people vote for my guy.

I was down for flavorful gametext before what seems like arbitrary +cost associated with each. So instead I went with no ability.

[monty42]

C'mon people vote for my guy.

I was down for flavorful gametext before what seems like arbitrary +cost associated with each. So instead I went with no ability.

So you went for cheap nothing instead of expensive goodness. That's your prerogative although I don't agree with that at all!
Do you really wanna make a meaningless generic card over something that'd be really good just because it might be a little more pricey?
We don't even have the slightest figure on the actual cost yet. That +1.5 could still land him at 3 which is what I would envision for a card like that. And there's still Guinan.

[Naetor]

C'mon people vote for my guy.

I was down for flavorful gametext before what seems like arbitrary +cost associated with each. So instead I went with no ability.

So you went for cheap nothing instead of expensive goodness. That's your prerogative although I don't agree with that at all!
Do you really wanna make a meaningless generic card over something that'd be really good just because it might be a little more pricey?
We don't even have the slightest figure on the actual cost yet. That +1.5 could still land him at 3 which is what I would envision for a card like that. And there's still Guinan.

The costs applied seem wrong, and dissuades me for voting anything related to cost before the rest of the card is revealed. According to the costs implied, you could have:

5-5-5 0 skills + engagement text for 2 OR
6-6-6 4 skills + engagement text for 4

The first is a good battle card, the second is probably not.

I guess I'd just have preferred the costs get discussed at the end. 'No ability' seemed like the right choice after overlaying the cost-chart so blatantly, which I found off-putting for most selections.

[edgeofhearing]

So you went for cheap nothing instead of expensive goodness. That's your prerogative although I don't agree with that at all!
Do you really wanna make a meaningless generic card over something that'd be really good just because it might be a little more pricey?
We don't even have the slightest figure on the actual cost yet. That +1.5 could still land him at 3 which is what I would envision for a card like that. And there's still Guinan.

Indeed, the cost value of this particular ability was based off Kerla.

Will of the Collective can seem a bit Frankenstein-y, since we build the cards piece by piece. On a team of 2-3 designers you can go back and forth more easily, but when you're including the feedback of the whole community it's easier to build a foundation one element at a time.

The reason that I opted to start with the ability is our choice here will likely inform our decisions down the road more than anything else. If we pick a more expensive ability here, we'll have the opportunity to choose to give the personnel fewer skills and/or lower attributes down the road to compensate. If we picked skills and attributes first though, and then wanted to give the personnel a high-value ability, we'd then need to re-hash what we'd already nailed down if the personnel were to come out prohibitively expensive.

Long story short: pick the ability you want; we'll have the opportunity to tailor the rest of the personnel to match it.

[GooeyChewie]

I was down for flavorful gametext before what seems like arbitrary +cost associated with each. So instead I went with no ability.

I guess I'd just have preferred the costs get discussed at the end. 'No ability' seemed like the right choice after overlaying the cost-chart so blatantly, which I found off-putting for most selections.

Abilities directly influence a personnel's cost. These cost modifications would have been true even if they were not listed. We will still get to discuss total cost when we decide attributes/skills; adding the costing just gives voters an idea of what the options will look like down the road. Each half point of cost is worth about one skill.

If you're mainly concerned about the cost, you might want to consider one of the first five options. They all boil down to getting a cost savings for playing the personnel alongside the Battleship crew, just with varying methods of accomplishing the same goal.

[Latok]

I was down for flavorful gametext before what seems like arbitrary +cost associated with each. So instead I went with no ability.

I guess I'd just have preferred the costs get discussed at the end. 'No ability' seemed like the right choice after overlaying the cost-chart so blatantly, which I found off-putting for most selections.

Abilities directly influence a personnel's cost. These cost modifications would have been true even if they were not listed. We will still get to discuss total cost when we decide attributes/skills; adding the costing just gives voters an idea of what the options will look like down the road. Each half point of cost is worth about one skill.

If you're mainly concerned about the cost, you might want to consider one of the first five options. They all boil down to getting a cost savings for playing the personnel alongside the Battleship crew, just with varying methods of accomplishing the same goal.

First, I think it's a bad idea to throw the stupidity of the 'costing-chart' or whatever it is in our faces, it's not fun or interesting.

Second, obviously abilities affect a personnel's cost but not every ability can have a pre-defined cost, consider the 4th ability.

At the start of your turn, you may place this personnel on top of his/her owner's deck. If you do, the first card you play this turn is cost -2.

Putting that on a 1-cost person would affect the overall cost differently than it would a 4-cost person. There are a few more in there pre-costed terribly as well.

[Naetor]

Indeed, the cost value of this particular ability was based off Kerla.

Abilities directly influence a personnel's cost. These cost modifications would have been true even if they were not listed.

This is where, I think, the costing provided is wrong. Kerla is a unique Klingon. We're talking about a non-unique AU TNG. There's about 50 reasons for battling with Klingons, there's 1 with TNG. There's no way their gametext's costs should be comparable.

[Faithful Reader]

Indeed, the cost value of this particular ability was based off Kerla.

Abilities directly influence a personnel's cost. These cost modifications would have been true even if they were not listed.

This is where, I think, the costing provided is wrong. Kerla is a unique Klingon. We're talking about a non-unique AU TNG. There's about 50 reasons for battling with Klingons, there's 1 with TNG. There's no way their gametext's costs should be comparable.

The proposed ability is strictly speaking worse than Kerla. He goes under the deck allowing you to play him again. This personnel is placed out of play entirely, making him harder to get out a second time. Plus, it's harder to pull off as TNG has less ways to battle and when they do, there's less ways to really reap the rewards.

[edgeofhearing]

Second, obviously abilities affect a personnel's cost but not every ability can have a pre-defined cost, consider the 4th ability.

At the start of your turn, you may place this personnel on top of his/her owner's deck. If you do, the first card you play this turn is cost -2.

Putting that on a 1-cost person would affect the overall cost differently than it would a 4-cost person. There are a few more in there pre-costed terribly as well.

Adding that ability in a purely frankenstein manner to an otherwise 1-cost personnel wouldn't make much sense, I agree. Chopping a cost down by twos isn't very helpful if a personnel costs less than 4, and it is asking something of the voting public to understand that, if they vote for this ability, we're aiming to make a personnel that costs 4, 5, or *shudder* 6.

If we were to pick that ability then, in the next step, we'll be able to choose which total cost we're going to shoot for with it in mind. That's when it would be a good time to make the argument that 3 is a bad cost to shoot for, and I suspect you'd have a receptive audience.

EDIT: Looks like I thought you were talking about a different ability (the cost-2 for each player that commands a 4 cost personnel ability). Oops! This one (the "top of deck" ability) is a similar situation, just reversed - while the "for each player" ability only makes sense on someone expensive, "top of deck" only makes sense on someone cheap. Once we've chosen either ability, we'd probably want to aim for certain cost-points.

You are also right that not all of these costs are going to be on the nose. Predicting an ability's cost prior to playtesting, especially if it is not an existing ability, is really hard. It is entirely likely that someone will put our finished card in the deck, and determine that it needs to be more or less expensive.

That's why I've tried to plaster this part of the process with disclaimers like "estimated" or "provisional", though perhaps I could do a better job with that part. I do feel like it is important to get an estimate up there though, so we can use it to guide the rest of the process.

I am open to suggestions about how to run this part of Will of the Collective, and since this step has generated a little vocal dissent and a lot of silence (though possibly due to falling on a lower traffic weekend), it is perhaps something that needs to be tweaked before we can do this procedure again. Building the personnel element by element does necessitate some inorganic steps, but perhaps there is another way that I haven't considered.

Maybe we could pick the personnel's total cost first next time, and then pick the ability? I think we would still need ability cost estimates (so we'd know how much we'd have left to spend on skills and attributes), but it would be less jarring?

[Naetor]

Second, obviously abilities affect a personnel's cost but not every ability can have a pre-defined cost, consider the 4th ability.

At the start of your turn, you may place this personnel on top of his/her owner's deck. If you do, the first card you play this turn is cost -2.

Putting that on a 1-cost person would affect the overall cost differently than it would a 4-cost person. There are a few more in there pre-costed terribly as well.

Adding that ability in a purely frankenstein manner to an otherwise 1-cost personnel wouldn't make much sense, I agree.

Yeah, that would have to be on a 1-cost personnel. If it did, it becomes an interesting card that lets you curve out 4-costers a little easier. Otherwise it'd almost never be used.

The proposed ability is strictly speaking worse than Kerla.

Even if it was worded exactly like Kerla, I'd argue it shouldn't cost the same. With Klingons, Kerla can be used in combination with Kromm getting out a cheap All-out War and murdering a 4th with Ferocity and a 2nd dilemma with Ja\'chuq, Bah!'ing, or Kruge a ship. TNG only really has the Battleship. I'd say the Kerla gametext on a TNG personnel is more appropriately costed at +0 than +1.5 given how weak battle is for them as an affiliation.

I am open to suggestions about how to run this part of Will of the Collective, and since this step has generated a little vocal dissent and a lot of silence (though possibly due to falling on a lower traffic weekend), it is perhaps something that needs to be tweaked before we can do this procedure again.

I think you're doing a mostly fine job, and I am probably in the minority on most of these things. Throwing in the sacred cost-chart does make the Design philosophy open to criticism, and I enjoy the opportunity to do so.

[monty42]

...TNG only really has the Battleship...

That's only true, if you take a very superficial look at it.
You get cheap War Without Ends courtesy of Delivery Boy. There's tons of Enterprise-D captains so Standing Your Ground let's you keep WWE around. The high cost nature of the Battleship crew makes Call To Arms an auto-include.
All of that makes for quite reliable 25-point engagements.
Now if you're willing to throw in a couple of , you could even consider using Delta Pavonis. The skill palette and attributes of the Battleship crew already favor DP.

As for the comparison with Kerla, I believe that since this is a non-unique it is absolutely justified for him to remove in order to avoid imbalanced recurrance. You can only use one Kerla per engagement since he is unique but you could use three copies of this guy per engagement and if he was worded just like Kerla, Sarina Douglas would create quite a bad loop.

[Old Kor]

...guys, only 32 total votes, give me a break. Sorry, I'm done here. For the next days I'm hiking within the Snowdonia National Park, North Wales. Cadair Iris makes more sense to me. CU you in Manchester or in Vienna, cheers!

[Latok]

EDIT: Looks like I thought you were talking about a different ability (the cost-2 for each player that commands a 4 cost personnel ability). Oops! This one (the "top of deck" ability) is a similar situation, just reversed - while the "for each player" ability only makes sense on someone expensive, "top of deck" only makes sense on someone cheap. Once we've chosen either ability, we'd probably want to aim for certain cost-points.

You are also right that not all of these costs are going to be on the nose. Predicting an ability's cost prior to playtesting, especially if it is not an existing ability, is really hard. It is entirely likely that someone will put our finished card in the deck, and determine that it needs to be more or less expensive.

That's why I've tried to plaster this part of the process with disclaimers like "estimated" or "provisional", though perhaps I could do a better job with that part. I do feel like it is important to get an estimate up there though, so we can use it to guide the rest of the process.

The problem is by adding the 'provisional' costs you've muddied the waters, more than half of the abilities can't be costed in a vacuum they're subject to the rest of the card or they're just wrong, for example the stop prevention ability is in no way worth 4, that's absurd. Saying provisional to playtesting doesn't mean anything, even if that phrase wasn't hidden away, people are going to see the costs you've added and assume that's it.

I am open to suggestions about how to run this part of Will of the Collective, and since this step has generated a little vocal dissent and a lot of silence (though possibly due to falling on a lower traffic weekend), it is perhaps something that needs to be tweaked before we can do this procedure again. Building the personnel element by element does necessitate some inorganic steps, but perhaps there is another way that I haven't considered.

Maybe we could pick the personnel's total cost first next time, and then pick the ability? I think we would still need ability cost estimates (so we'd know how much we'd have left to spend on skills and attributes), but it would be less jarring?

What should actually happen is that we vote on the ability, the skills, the attributes and the cost. If everything is subject to 'playtesting' I don't see why we can't really make a card and have them decide if it's under-costed instead of incorrect costing getting thrown around and a card ending up over-costed so playtesters OK it and then we get a bad card.

At the bare minimum just don't mention costs, we play the game we know cards have costs and why. Look at the first two WotC the costs were part of the discussion and people's arguments for choosing options.