Discuss all of your questions, concerns, comments and ideas about Second Edition.
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Moderator
#559872
To be clear, however, textual dream cards (without any links to them in graphical form, should such exist) can be posted in the Dream Cards subforum.
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#559873
I doubt there is a CC-alike out there. Making dream cards and trying new house rules and going to a print shop is the easy part. Consistent design and testing and maintaining a global community is hard.

There is plenty of public evidence of the former, just go to any forum on this site. Being conspiratorial about it makes you either someone who isn't paying much attention, or an attention seeker.

Very interested and surprised to hear of any evidence of the latter.
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#559875
Back to useful conversation:

My two main 2e bugbears seem to be in conflict with the premise of this thread, which is that 1e is doing something right that 2e isn't.

A smaller card pool (this was raised in-person yesterday without my prompting) would make it easier to keep up and build decks. 1e has more cards than 2e, so unless the block thing is still going and creating lots of events (?) we're not getting anywhere here. Unless... is 1e less punishing if you don't know the card pool well?

Scheduling: I make no secret of wanting to fit an entire tournament in on a weeknight / making 1 online game a week not require scheduling 2 hours / making an online 1-day event require < 3 hours instead of 4-5. See my signature for my solution. However 1e is even longer than 2e, so 🤷🏻‍♂️.

In other words, if 2e became more like 1e in the things that I care most about at the moment, I'd probably be less likely to play 2e.

One clear positive difference I see for 1e is: organisers with energy, viz. Kaiserfest, and players willing to go beyond the extra mile to join them.
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By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
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Prophet
#559918
I debated if I should reply to this or not. I decided in the end to keep it brief.

I would love to play more, but for what I hope are obvious reasons, my playing time is mostly dedicated to 1E. That being said, I have long been removed from the goings on of 2E for two main reasons:

1) I was told and then subsequently given the impression that I was not wanted in the 2E volunteer roster. I realize now this wasn't as true as I thought, with a few exceptions.

2) I, and some people I am close too, are sick of all of the drama associated with the game. A few such people were personally impacted by decisions and thus walked away. It's worn away at me.

-crp
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#559946
To me, 2E has always been in that middle zone. It doesn't have the speed or mechanical smoothness of other games, but also doesn't have the flavor or joy of 1e.

I can enjoy Magic regardless of the flavor, which changes set to set, because the underlying mechanics are that good.

The Borg are the perfect example to me. In 1E, they feel like the Borg. SOme of the most fun times I ever had playing either game was around the time of EFC/Blaze of Glory, being able to assimilate opponent's personnel and use the overlays.

In 2e, when the Borg came out I was excited. ANd then, meh. When I assimilate something, it's literally just mind control. Playing Borg doesn't *feel* different on the level that it does in 1E. And that's fine, because there are more players that are turned off my the rules baggage then not, probably.

The other big stumbling block for me was the lack of battle. I get that it shouldn't be like in 1E where you can be wiped out by one battle and left behind . But given how many episodes of Star Trek involve phasers or torpedoes fired, and the lack of spontaneous, meaningful interaction between players at a battle level is the biggest reason I'm not interested.

It should be easy to recover from a battle. Battle should buy you a turn, not the game. But when it works right, a battle should be always capable of happening, not require me to build my deck in the first place to have it, and the battle should have built in ways that it could go either way. (Like the tactics in 1E in theory.)
 
By Honest
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
2E Australian Continental Champion 2019
#559954
Sydney has really only run 2e events, with 1e popping up at Continentals and/or worlds once or twice a year. So the 8-12 2e events scheduled most years would be out of the system.

That being said, the 2e event organisers (ie me) lack of enthusiasm over the last couple od year, together with Covid shutting down any play at all since a learn to play day we did March 2020 has certainly stopped any events from happening. We did have a Regionals for 2e and Tribbles slated for August 14, but a covid lockdown (and it is now in the indefinite stage) stopped that.

So we would be playing 2e a few times a year, circumstances currently beyond the CCs control of quashed us (though their actions over several years did squish our play group and morale)

Cheers

Honest
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
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Community Contributor
#566630
Updated numbers with 6 weeks to go in the year:

82 completed 2e events, 9 scheduled. 91 total.

61 completed 1e events, 5 scheduled. 66 total.

Assuming these numbers hold up, that means that 1e actually had an increase in tournament count over last year. I'm sure that's something @MidnightLich will be happy to know.

On the 2e side, while not as bad as it looked on my first pass back in August, 2021 is still looking to show a 25% decrease over last year's tournament count.

And while it's not 1.16:1 like it was a few months ago, the fact remains that the 2e:1e ratio still dropped, a lot, from roughly 2:1 to a much narrower 1.38:1.

While the pandemic is hardly over, I think it's hard to attribute this year's decrease to COVID, especially given the increase on the 1e side.

Again, I have my thoughts on the reasons why this might be the case, but I'm not interested in editorializing at this point.

I'm putting these numbers out so that other community members, and - hopefully- the 2e staff, can see the facts and ask what (if anything) is going wrong, and if so how best to fix it.

Maybe something to ask about come PoR time as well...
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By The Prefect (Michael Shea)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Prefect
2E Sector 001 Regional Champion 2023
#566654
Armus wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 8:30 am I have my own thoughts on possible causes of this development, but my goal here isn't to editorialize, it's to present facts, and the fact that one game has stayed basically the same in pandemic-adjusted terms while the other has dropped precipitously would seem to indicate that there's reasons other than the pandemic. I'll leave the possible reasons for this divergence between 1e and 2e participation as an exercise to the reader.
TLDR: the factors contributing to 2e decline are 1) COVID; 2) 1e nostalgia; 3) volunteer/board errors; 4) increasing demands on time while experiencing decreasing levels of energy (i.e. age); 5) bad actors on the forums and in the community; and, 6) lack of prompt and decisive response to those bad actors.

I rarely participate in these forums anymore - much for the same reasons I rarely play anymore and rarely volunteer. But, assuming that a) participation in 2e really is down and my lack of interest is indeed part of a wider trend, and b) your post is a genuine attempt to discover information about this trend so as to reverse it, I wanted to present my insight for whatever it may be worth. I'm only speaking for myself.

COVID, and its ripple affects on economic, political, and social life is definitely a factor.

1e is about that right age for Gen-X and Xennial nostalgia to kick in. Don't believe me? Look at dream card groups and forums - the content is overwhelmingly 1e-centric and has been for years. That's a factor driving 1e participation that 2e doesn't enjoy quite yet.

These two factors shouldn't be dismissed or treated as trivial. But they aren't the full story.

2e leadership and the Board have both made some missteps over the last couple years. That's not unsurprising - any volunteer organization suffers the same sort of missteps from time to time - and always will. We're all only human. If I'm being honest, I have to acknowledge that reality. But the story doesn't stop there either.

Now, speaking only for my own lack of participation: for various reasons, I don't get the same satisfaction out of playing 2e anymore, or volunteering, or participating in these forums. I'll elaborate, and I submit that my experience is shared by others - and that makes it a significant part of the story.
  • I'm starting a new career as a teacher. I'm currently putting in 60-70 hour workweeks. This leaves me fairly exhausted.
  • I'm not 21 anymore.
This means that taking the time to regularly keep up with these forums, to volunteer, and to put together decks and schedule events and show up and play them represents a very high opportunity cost. To an extent, that has always been the case for me. I think that's the case for lots of us. We have lives. We have careers. Some have kids. In short: there are increasing demands on our time and we don't have quite the energy we used to.

But over the last 18 months or so a fifth factor has been introduced that has increased the opportunity cost past the point it makes any sense to put aside the time and expend the energy.
  • The last 18 months to two years has been defined by an incessant negativity, dishonesty, and general unpleasantness gleefully displayed on these forums by a select few community members who seem to take enormous pleasure out of creating conflict and making other people unhappy.
This has made everything about the 2e experience far less fun. And, while most (though not all) of the worst actors are now, thankfully, no longer actively present on these forums, there are an even more select few who remain that expend a great deal of energy defending those absent former community members and attacking anyone who sees their departure as a net good using a very selective interpretation of events (to put it politely).

Now, this is nothing unique to the internet. Every site has keyboard warriors who get off on warping reality and making their corner of the internet an unpleasant place. But - and this brings me to the sixth and final factor - most other websites are far more aggressive and prompt about dealing with such nonsense than TrekCC historically has been. Simply put, in most other internet communities, even other Trek-related internet communities, the kind of bad actors I'm speaking of aren't permitted to hang around long enough to do much damage and this fact tends to send a message to others who might be inclined to support them or follow in their footsteps.

Why does this matter? Well, since I started graduate school in 2014, participating in this game always involved a very high opportunity cost. But, it used to be more fun. Now that it's less fun, it makes less sense to pay the cost. So I don't.

That means I don't participate in events anymore. But it also means I don't run events anymore either. Atlanta, to the best of my knowledge, has put in no bids for events in 2022. I have no plans to do so. I am not aware of anyone in the Atlanta group that wants to pay the cost involved in taking over my role - for much the same reasons I've articulated above. Some may have noted there was no Trek at Dragon Con this year. That's why. I don't see there being any next year - at least not with the involvement of anyone I know in the Atlanta group.

Over the last few years, Atlanta has hosted some of the most successful and well-attended events in the country - particularly for 2e. And while no one person can take credit for that, I was the person who planned, organized, and promoted those events. I don't anymore - and no one has stepped up to take my place. As far as I know, no one local wants to, and for many of the same reasons.

So, there it is. If participation in 2e is declining and if, Brian, this is something that genuinely concerns you, I'd encourage you to think long and hard about the above. Because it is my sincere belief that the behavior of those I'm referring to, and the lack of prompt and effective response, are two of the most significant factors driving down interest in 2e - maybe even the two most significant. In other words, those former community members and those insistent on ignoring or tolerating their antics, or, worse, passionately defending them at every opportunity, are killing this game - or at least have dealt it a very serious blow from which it may never recover.

I may be only speaking for myself, but I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way. I know I'm not the only Atlantan who feels this way. If this community has any sense of self-preservation left - of which I am honestly uncertain - then those responsible for keeping this game alive have to come to terms with this reality. The first step in solving a problem is admitting that it exists.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Regent
Community Contributor
#578825
Revisiting this thread with final 2021 numbers:

70 completed 1e events, up from 59 in 2020 (+11)
93 completed 2e events, down from 119 in 2020 (-26)

As for this year...

15 completed 1e events so far in 2022, with 23 additional events scheduled, for a current total of 38 1e events.

39 completed 2e events so far in 2022, with 17 additional events scheduled, for a current total of 56 2e events.

Make of those numbers what you will.
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By Danny (Daniel Giddings)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
2E British National Runner-Up 2021
#578826
Armus wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 12:51 pmMake of those numbers what you will.

Without digging into the guts of the numbers, it looks like at the halfway point of the year, the 2E numbers are going to about the same (or a little more) than last year, no?
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
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Regent
Community Contributor
#578829
Danny wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 1:09 pm
Armus wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 12:51 pmMake of those numbers what you will.

Without digging into the guts of the numbers, it looks like at the halfway point of the year, the 2E numbers are going to about the same (or a little more) than last year, no?
Possibly. Looking at the tournaments scheduled for June, assuming they all happen, we'll be at 46 at the halfway point, which would be pretty much on track to match last year.

The caution I would throw in is that leaves only 10 events currently scheduled for the entire second half of the year.

Now, that's not to say that more tournaments won't be scheduled, and obviously the further out you go, the less certain the numbers become.

It's also possible that as we get closer to peak championship season the event count might go up, as side events, chairs challenges, etc. all come to fruition.

I'm not drawing any conclusions at this point, but I thought at the almost halfway point of the year, it was at least worth doing a pulse check to see where things stood.

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