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monty42 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 7:04 pm

Marquetry wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 5:42 pm
*And please stop changing cards for the sake of changing them- there are several errata in the past few years that have annoyed me. (In addition to people who may not check the site as often, or don't want to reprint the same card multiple times)

I'm wondering what makes you think that people would change cards "for the sake of changing them"?
I honestly can't think of a reason why somebody would do that.
Now I can't speak for all of them but I can at least assure you that all of the errata I've been involved in was made with the best interest of improving gameplay in mind.
That obviously might mean something different to different people but those decisions certainly weren't made lightly.

It's primarily the gameplay-related changes that actually bother me; I'm neutral on the grammar/minor edits.
Without going into specific errata, since that's a topic for another time: it's another situation that shows how divided opinions are on what the game needs. Person A may think a card is fine, the deck it's in is fun and works as intended; it's not exceeding a normal power range. Person B doesn't like playing against this card, thinks it's too strong or sees it too frequently.

I'm more person A, and think errata should be for cards found to be enabling loops, having a powerful interaction that was missed, etc.

Repeating a few things and adding some more:

- Fewer dilemmas that return to the pile
- In-game decisions coming to the fore (especially in-mission decisions)
- Game-altering - but not game-ending - reasons to move to your opponent's missions
- Synergy between draw deck and dilemmas (sometimes this is just up to the deck builder, e.g. I recently played a Ferengi deck with lots of dilemmas that used the fact that all my personnel had Acquisition)
- Slow rotation or set blocks like 1e has with TNG/DS9/? (HoF may just be the answer here; with some clever way to make the format front and center when browsing / designing decks)


Tech:
- mobile-friendly deck builder
- ways to search/like (rate?)/share/discuss other people's decklists
- updated 2e side links (no idea what state the 1e links are in)

This is a good one. Buffing the affiliation-synergy dilemmas would be a good way of adding more dilemma pile diversity and increasing the feel of difference between affiliations.

Fritzinger wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:50 am Repeating a few things and adding some more:


- Synergy between draw deck and dilemmas (sometimes this is just up to the deck builder, e.g. I recently played a Ferengi deck with lots of dilemmas that used the fact that all my personnel had Acquisition)

Enabran wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 4:08 am No thank you. At my last tournament 2 of us rage quit because of your named interaction. It is so much unfun to play against such decks.

I would argue part of that is because most affiliations don't have enough ways to interact with them. There should be built in ways to respond back. Like, I don't know, being able to fight the Romulans that come in to my territory?

If you think the interaction is unfun to play against, I'm sympathetic to that. But as a player coming in, they were one of the only affiliations to actually feel different and let me feel like my draw deck mattered against my opponent.

1E made the huge mistake of letting facility be able to be destroyed for a lock out. If I was designing 1E from the ground up, tactics would be a mandatory part of the game, and hull damage wouldn't exist. That way battles would be more common, but the costs would be slow down, not lock out.

2E needs more things like this, IMO. Oh, you are steam-rolling past my dilemmas? Let me park my ship in your mission and buy a single turn or two thru [insert mechanic here].

At the end of they day my biggest issue is that for most affiliations, my draw deck and your draw deck never interact. Only our dilemmas interact with each others draw decks, and that's an area we lack. It also makes comeback mechanics really hard. Currently any interaction has to be planned out at time of deck building, with no chance of spontaneous interaction. That's bad game design (and that's Decipher's fault).

Most games are decided solely on who's the quicker at playing the right personnel and passing dilemmas. While that should always be the heart of the game, it should not be the end all, because that's close to the 2-player solitaire that 1E can be.

Enabran wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 4:08 am 2. More affiliations.
Vidiians... I don't know what they should do differently than the others. They also have to solve missions. Storywise they should do something with your opponents personnel. And they must do something to stay alive. So all should have a Decay. Maybe they will gain skills or points from them. A mix of Cardassians and Borg?
And even worse: There is hardly any visual material for cards. We have seen 3 ships and here is the list of all unnamed Vidiian personnel seen in the show. Not to mention that the images used in that List are the best shots of those personnel. So have fun with an Affiliation of about 20 cards and 75% of blurred images. Like the 56-set-blur-faces- .
1E managed to create 19 personnel cards (Some of the unnamed Vidiians shown were used for more than 1 personnel). Relativity is the smallest Sub-"Affiliation" and even there you can choose between 30 names. But they can cheat in more faces. But every Relativity deck plays the same. And the even more limited Vidiians?

Here's part of my view on it. Sooner or later, the game will add Vidiians. And Kazon, Hirogen, etc. They are too big a part of VOY to never address. So the choices are:

- don't do them, even as we mine and re-mine other material
- unique affilaitions
- a mega- Affiliation
-

Of those, feels the worst to me because Decipher made the poor choice of not differentiating the way they did [FED]. 1E had the quadrants be too strict, but if you make be , then they can report to almost any HQ.

get around one of the core costs in the game, which is needing a specific HQ to play at.

I'm personally fine if are highly limited in their personnel. They could be an affiliation that needs dual-HQ or heavy support. But I don't want every other affiliation to get yet more options when there's reason for them not to be.

Like you say, relativity decks are all fairly similar. I'd still prefer that over the Relativity decks just being generic Fed. Even if every Vidiian deck is within 2 cards of every other Vidiian deck, it's still another choice instead of Vidiians showing up in a deck, for example.

There are 23 headquarters in the game currently, plus Voyager, To Rule In Hell, and Relativity. That's 26 places people can report, and can report at 13 of them unrestricted. Since a good chunk of those are alternate HQ for the main affiliations, that means that any new personnel can immediately possibly slot in to about half the deck types or more. That's the biggest argument for affiliations for me.

.

More affiliations is fine with me, adds more variety personnel/stories even if the mechanics of that affiliation is similar to what we've seen before. So give us Vidiian Kazon etc. However, I'd love to see them somewhat restricted in mixing in the alpha quadrant.

More dilemmas that directly support affiliations and/or mechanics like (battle, capture, infiltration, combat, deck manipulation etc.)

I dislike Ritual cards, these meta game referee cards should have been in the dilemma pile somehow, so they are hidden and not in plain sight.
Same goes for referee missions like A5A. Awful! While the purpose is right, they limit mission selection. This also should be addressed in the dilemma pile.
If necessary more cards that support referee mechanics that come from the dilemma pile.

New headquarters. I love those specific headquarters that give a benefit but limit you otherwise (usually no NA). Great way to support certain strategies. I'd love to see more of those...
... especially because I am sure you guys will never add the new card type Objective (new keyword Seed.) to game . (Never make me 2e director )

I really like flip missions. Great way to add story telling and theme to the game. Imagine Stop First Contact would have been a flip mission... awesome!
So.. more of those.

I love the eye candy… borderless, frame escaping, anything else you got. I know at least one person who agrees with me and two who disagree

I want more stuff that refers to keywords.

Dilemma keywords

Some of the loaded keywords that exist would be great on more cards: recall, replicate, decay come to mind.

I’d like some themes to be wrapped into loaded keywords, it just makes gameplay conversations much shorter. e.g. the cadet ability, what if Dorian Collins’ text was:

“resourcefulness (while this personnel is facing a dilemma, they gain the following): Anthropology, Engineer, Geology, Honor, Transporters and attributes +1“

- rulings can apply to multiple cards easily
- it's to identify that a ruling applies to a card
- designers will find it easier to use the standard approach instead of saying the same thing three different ways
- easier for other cards to refer to them: e.g. "when a personnel uses resourcefulness..." instead of "when a personnel gains a skill while facing a dilemma" ... this can be great for adding flavour if there's a nice verb that ties in with what happens when a loaded keyword takes effect
- hammers are mysterious to new players. Imagine someone new reading a hypothetical anti-skill-gain hammer: they can easily search for resourcefulness to see why the hammer exists, instead of looking for all the different cards with different wording where people gain skills while facing dilemmas.

And then for the real magic trick, do some AP cards without the rules text .

This specific example would require errata to lots of existing cards if you wanted everything consistent, but maybe consistency isn't important (it isn't for MtG commander players). Or maybe it’d be better to start somewhere else with fewer existing cases.

Fritzinger wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:19 am I want more stuff that refers to keywords.

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This specific example would require errata to lots of existing cards if you wanted everything consistent, but maybe consistency isn't important (it isn't for MtG commander players). Or maybe it’d be better to start somewhere else with fewer existing cases.

100% yet. Keywords are also great for helping players recognize a theme. And I believe any line of 3-4 words that appears on 10+ cards should be worth considering as a keyword.

As far as the errata goes, I personally think this would be the perfect candidate for errata that doesn't require a card image update, but would be fixed hen the card is reprinted. (To avoid having to update soo many.) (1E Example, the IK/IKS name switch on klingon ships.)

Keywords are great because they give other cards handles to grab on to.

Instead of a dilemma saying "if a personnel has gained a skill this attempt, you need cunning>50 to pass" - "if a personnel was resourceful, ...."

And, if the card has room, add the rules text in italic as reminder. Then AIs can have the clean look.

We have a lot of board state to keep track of that varies from game to game in a deck. Particularly difficult for inexperienced players. I haven’t drawn those two really important abilities from last game, now I have to learn the new abilities. Oh, those abilities I just understood are on personnel who died.

The problem here is more important than the solution I’m about to give. There are probably other solutions.

What about some “training wheels” cards. Things that help you set up and protect your board state at a cost that no competitive player would ever use:

“place 3 dilemmas under your opponent’s incomplete mission to download a personnel” (get the card your mentor tells you you always want)

“Remove a dilemma from under your incomplete mission to prevent kills / stop those personnel instead”