Discovery rox wrote:problem with your example is its a extreme edge case that is almost tailor made to dodge the problems i explained.
It's literally something that happened within the past six months. I just picked one of two recent examples. (The other example is at the bottom of this post.)
-nobody uses self controlling cards, so nobodys going to be confused if those rules change. i bet 99% of people who see self controlling cards in game look up all the rules at that point anyway because nobodys going to be remembering those rules anyhow.
249 decks that have used
Spaceborne Entity (alone) would like a word.
self controlling cards are not a long established part of the game, they were made by continuing committee.
The first self-controlling card was released in 2013. To put this in perspective, the [self] rules are older today than the
rules were on the day Decipher launched 2E.
-self controlling cards already have there own section of rules which barely touch anything else, so changing those rules is already going to be super self contained. compare that to the thing that sparked this discussion, changing mission attempts to include scouting.
I already agreed with this! If anyone were to pursue the suggestion seriously (and I'm not), it would require a lot of research just to reach the formal proposal stage, and then there would be plenty of testing needed after.
All I said in the first place was, there are two ways of introducing a change like this into the game: you could change the rule, or you could create a card. The community, for some reason, is usually okay with creating a card, but not with changing a rule, even if the two things have identical effects.
For example, here's a card idea I just came up with to illustrate the point:
I-MOD Gun {Star Trek: Elite Force}
Seeds or plays on table. Rogue Borg may not play to your ships or facilities. Cards that refer to "mission attempts" include scouting attempts.
This is the kind of thing that shows up in sets fairly regularly. It's an offensive card that tweaks the rules a bit as a counter against a particular deck. It might only hurt Borg a little, it might hurt them a lot (in which case the community might get mad), but it would basically be accepted as the kind of thing that happens in a living card game. It would be seen as at least a legitimate concept, worth testing, even if it turns out to not be, ultimately, a good idea.
By contrast, if a new
rule came out saying exactly the same thing -- cards that refer to "mission attempts" include scouting attempts, I think there would be a significant community backlash against the very legitimacy of the idea. The Rules Committee would be accused of fundamentally changing the game and of messing around with sacred things that should never, ever be altered.
If you don't believe me, you can actually see this dynamic in action on these boards just this year:
OH NO GREAT BIRD A RULES CHANGE RAGE:
viewtopic.php?p=402447#p402447
OH HEY A NEW CARD COULD BE FUN:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38381&start=30
This
despite the fact that the new card hits Borg
way harder than the tiny rules change Pants floated in the thread.
Logical conclusion: the community has a rules fetish.
It's understandable. We underwent years of abuse at the hands of Decipher's capricious rules department. But our reaction against that has turned us (as a community) into fanatics, decrying even well-tested, well-vetted, balanced rule changes as sacrilege even as we allow the game to evolve in a variety of other, far more dramatic, ways. You can see it in the Borg gender discussion, and you can see it in the discussions of
reform. This fetish harms the game.
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