[Ensign Q]

obv the complexity of rules is some kind of a barrier. on the other hand, the major appeal of the game is its complexity...

I feel the main problem comes from being the game officially dead. I noticed in other games, player need an official superbeing, to be interested. be it fringe formats in mtg, mods in pc games or whatnot.
on top of that, star trek is a pretty dead franchise right now, tng is ages old and the newer stuff is kinda bad or too different and not represented in the game. 1e is and was always little of an tng era rpg. replay the episode in cards and that era is long gone. we are now more far away from tng than tng was from Tos..

[geraldkw]

obv the complexity of rules is some kind of a barrier. on the other hand, the major appeal of the game is its complexity...

I feel the main problem comes from being the game officially dead. I noticed in other games, player need an official superbeing, to be interested. be it fringe formats in mtg, mods in pc games or whatnot.
on top of that, star trek is a pretty dead franchise right now, tng is ages old and the newer stuff is kinda bad or too different and not represented in the game. 1e is and was always little of an tng era rpg. replay the episode in cards and that era is long gone. we are now more far away from tng than tng was from Tos..

Decipher put out lots of advertising in comic books, comic store wall posters and other media back in the days and would undoubtedly be spamming Youtube/Facebook with ads and picking up the newer franchises to boot.

On the other hand I don't think they could have done as good of a job fixing the game as the CC has accomplished over the years. TMP was better than HA as far as power creep went but overall they just kept creating broken cards and refusing to issue errata or ban cards and that was bad for the game.

[Ensign Q]

im not saying cc did a worse job than decipher. in fact most fanprojects put more thought into their thing than corporations. im just saying that users usually shy away from fanprojects and rather buy and use the official products.

as said it boils down to tng being ancient now. id like to see cc taking picard into consideration and yeah i know about the rights situation, but maybe there is a blind spot/loophole.
afterall its a nonprofit game and an unused franchise.

[croxis]

10 year old son: "The hardest thing about this game is getting [ship and away teams] to places."

Edit for me:

It is the massive wall of rules, and that is excluding the individual card rulings. When I played back in 96 setting up the spacelane was simple. Now there are rules for sectors, protocols for seeding (although I do agree with that. i would have to find my original rule booklet somewhere..), side decks up the wazu. I feel ok playing with my son because I can select the rules we observe, but I am terrified to play online with others. There is also the new download mechanic which I haven't even gotten to yet.

The original cards were also designed to be a CCG, but online play and print and play turns the game into a LCG (Android Netrunner, etc) and a lot of the old card assumptions don't make sense anymore. Also the vast volume of cards is overwhelming for me. I can understand the cards in my personal collection fairly well and build decks from that.

[jadziadax8]

10 year old son: "The hardest thing about this game is getting [ship and away teams] to places."

Please tell him he has my sympathy. I've struggled with that for 21 years!

[geraldkw]

10 year old son: "The hardest thing about this game is getting [ship and away teams] to places."

Edit for me:

It is the massive wall of rules, and that is excluding the individual card rulings. When I played back in 96 setting up the spacelane was simple. Now there are rules for sectors, protocols for seeding (although I do agree with that. i would have to find my original rule booklet somewhere..), side decks up the wazu. I feel ok playing with my son because I can select the rules we observe, but I am terrified to play online with others. There is also the new download mechanic which I haven't even gotten to yet.

The original cards were also designed to be a CCG, but online play and print and play turns the game into a LCG (Android Netrunner, etc) and a lot of the old card assumptions don't make sense anymore. Also the vast volume of cards is overwhelming for me. I can understand the cards in my personal collection fairly well and build decks from that.

As someone who literally reads the glossary for fun, I still don't understand some of the rules and almost every deck I build has some problem related to rules interpretation. I think the only way to get over this is playing a lot with people who know the rules. Everyone I have played with online has been friendly and helpful with me getting used to how the rules work again. (I played since Premiere through the end of Decipher, followed the CC for a long time and recently started playing again)

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

The game isn't fun -- at least not the simplified/intro version of it.

I want to go back and elaborate on this. Let's go through some things that I like about 1E, and how well the starters deliver each of them.

-Nostalgia for Star Trek
Yes, its good that the starters are based on the most popular Trek series.
-Nostalgia for the game I played in the 90s.
Not really. The templates are familiar, but most of the cards aren't.
-Deck building: being creative, and getting to see my opponent's creativity.
No.
-The people I play with.
If with friends, yes; but then almost anything is fun. If with strangers, probably no.
-Making decisions about starting mission attempts.
No. A new player generally doesn't know about what dilemmas they need to play around, and Trek knowledge doesn't help them assemble teams. (At least with Premiere, you were rewarded by having SECURITY on a planet, ENGINEER in space, and MEDICAL everywhere.)
-Making decisions during dilemma encounters (including "your choice" and "opponent's choice" selections)
Somewhat. It looks like there's a small amount of this, but I'd have to play the starters again to see how much this comes in to play.
-Figuring out how to pass dilemmas. (Misinterpreted History, though it has its problems, is at least an interesting puzzle to solve.)
Somewhat. Same as above.
-Making decisions about battling or avoiding battle.
No, intros usually ignore battle.
-Making decisions about using limited resources (I'm thinking of cards like Make it So, Assign Support Personnel, Defend Homeworld, etc.)
Not really, the overly complicated Get It Done is the only example of this.

So what is actually fun here? Coming of Age certainly was an improvement, but in retrospect I wonder if the designers and playtesters (including me) were focused on the wrong things.

Thank you for this, it's really insightful. It's clear that we need something to differentiate between a deck designed to teach the game and a deck designed for beginners to play the game. Often we conflate the two, but as you suggest, that might be the wrong choice.

(Yes I know I'm necro'ing this thread again, but after this I'll be done, I think. )

It's not about having different decks, it's about teaching the actual game (and not just the rules of the game). Let's use the Mark Rosewater definition of a game, where a game is something that requires agency (i.e. meaningful decisions). With 1E (and probably 2E too) a player needs to have a minimum knowledge of the kinds of dilemmas they might encounter in order to make meaningful decisions about mission attempts. Otherwise, they're just randomly throwing personnel at missions and seeing what happens.

Now, back in Premiere, things were actually a little easier, since a lot of dilemmas had similar requirements that were based on common Star Trek tropes (and sci-fi tropes in general): Make sure to bring SECURITY to protect you on a planet, bring ENGINEER to prevent bad things from happening to your ship in space, and bring MEDICAL to prevent your personnel from dying at both kinds of mission. Obviously that gets boring after a while, so Decipher had to change things up, but now everything's mush.

(Also last January, when I tried out my Warp Speed cube, it was generally very fun, but there were moments where I noticed I wasn't having fun. This was when I had no idea how to attempt missions. Now, as the creator of the cube, I should know as well as anyone what dilemmas I might encounter! But since even I was lost at times, I'm thinking of making some changes.)

So anyway, to me, a good introductory experience needs to make sure that a new player has a basic understanding of the dilemmas they will be encountering and some of tradeoffs involved (e.g. attempt with a small team to minimize losses vs. attempt with XYZ to prevent losses). Then they'll be playing a game.