file SCE

20 May 2018 06:21 #87191 by elotar
Replied by elotar on topic SCE

... a card game about vampires ...


It's funny, how many people, playing the game for decades, do not get what VtES really is :P


I mean, all the armchair game designers trying to fix problems in VTES sure seem to forget that it is a card game. It really is astounding.


There is very popular in post Soviet states card game Durak. I highly recommend it to you, if you don't see the difference.

:splat: NC Russia
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20 May 2018 10:13 #87192 by Bloodartist
Replied by Bloodartist on topic SCE
I'm not sure what is going on here, but I just want to say that in my mind, strike:combat ends are fine as is. Political or bleeding vampires need some in-game way of keeping aggressive combatvampires in check. Currently there are in my opinion right amount of combat ends, and anti-combat end (immortal grapple, psyche, telepathic tracking). I wouldn't shed a tear if earth meld was errataed to cost blood, but Im fine with it.

Threat and its counters, counters to your counters. Its all decently well balanced. Of course largecap IC vampires are better suited for playing combat ends with their many disciplines and large blood amount, but its ok. Largecaps just got nerfed with the change to villein.

Suddenly the answer is interesting - against ANI, POT or CEL it's better to suffer but then stop combat, against aggro-poke it's better to dodge. So such effect is quite comparable or even better than strike:dodge, which is accepted as fine basic discipline effect.

Against aggropoke its better to prevent, since that works when you're grappled and dodge does not.

Sometimes (often times) its hard to decipher your intent from your posts..

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing



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20 May 2018 11:44 #87196 by TwoRazorReign
Replied by TwoRazorReign on topic SCE

There is very popular in post Soviet states card game Durak. I highly recommend it to you, if you don't see the difference.


Are you arguing that VTES combat should function more like Durak? Making VTES into Durak is not going to "fix" the more "problematic" card game in VTES.

Combat functions fine in VTES. It just needs a clearer outline in the rules. That's the only problem "bad management" introduced into the game.

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20 May 2018 12:38 #87197 by jamesatzephyr
Replied by jamesatzephyr on topic SCE

And because it was manager's fatty torporised by it, hell break loose and some "clever" fellow suggested to put superior Earth Meld effect to both Majesty and FoM.


I'm not sure why you think inventing bizarre little dramas in your head is helping anything? Jyhad's design is very strong in some areas, but there are obvious mistakes in the initial execution - anything from vote push with Political Action cards from your hand being too favourable to weenies, through to Zip Gun/DBR being a workable combination, to stealth-bleed being really incredibly powerful. Mistakes happen. Just because you want to change some part of the game doesn't mean that inventing nonsense about a manager having a vampire sent to torpor means that he broke Jyhad is in any way helpful. It is just as plausible that it was a rational, considered design decision, taken calmly and reasonably, to have combat work the way it did - and that, to the extent that it is sub-optimal, people make mistakes. They are not clairvoyant or psychic. They do not know exactly how things will pan out in the real world when the game goes from a relatively small group of playtesters who only have limited time and limited options to create ideas, to hundreds and thousands of players who will try a whole heap of stuff that you have never considered. That's just the economics of game design - in any game that's got a lot of free form elements, you won't be able to test every corner case.

Perspective - please get some.


We know that Garfield kept a reasonably tight grip on the production of Jyhad. One of the things he notes in the White Wolf book was being asked for rulings on whether certain things stacked, where they both set a base value of 2 (e.g. vampires with 2 hand damage, and Ritual Challenge giving the vampire 2 hand damage), and that that didn't happen, for example. The move to +1 hand damage etc. happened in the V:TES set, when Garfield was peripherally involved, and then a bunch of crazy things happened in DS/AH (e.g. Return to Innoence) and Sabbat when Garfield was basically not involved at all.

What else changed between Jyhad and V:TES? Notably, combat became much more brutal, because of rules changes. The rules we have now are less brutal, but still somewhat stronger than the Jyhad rules. In particular, the aggravated damage rules changed between Jyhad and V:TES in ways that made burning vampires significantly easier. The Jyhad rules functioned in a way known as 'packetization', in which each source of aggravated damage would have the first point send you to torpor. If you had a Ghoul Retainer and an Ivory Bow dealing one agg damage, and you used your hands to deal a second agg damage, that's two separate sources, so you can't burn from it. Ditto, Pulled Fangs. This was changed in V:TES to make combat much more brutal - the first point sent you to torpor but could also burn you, and packetization didn't occur. Result? A single point of agg damage could burn you if you were empty. Pulled Fangs could be played repeatedly to generate a lot of agg damage. (Note that various key combat cards of that era were also changed later, so if you are looking at card text, you need to look at Jyhad/V:TES text, not current text.)

So what do we know of what WotC did to the game? They deliberately wanted to make it more brutal. If managers at WotC were weeping openly because a vampire got sent to torpor, why would they make it open season for burning vampires with much less effort? Why would they have been asking Garfield if combat damage stacked, if they wanted to keep their precious, precious vampires unharmed?
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20 May 2018 20:26 #87205 by elotar
Replied by elotar on topic SCE
James, thanks for insight into Jyhad -> VtES transition changes. It's also very interesting, so we should discuss it sometime, obviously not now because they have nothing to do with the SCE development. Maybe except providing more material for "retardation of WotC managers and designers" case.

It is just as plausible that it was a rational, considered design decision, taken calmly and reasonably, to have combat work the way it did...
[/quote]

No it was not.

There were 69 combat cards in Jyhad + 17 weapons, 6 of which are melee.

Combat "working the way it did" contains 3 SCE cards, IG, Psyche, ZG + DBR, CW + Magnums, 2 aggro-poke cards, Torn Signpost, TSL (+ maybe Fists of Death, if you are saying so), 5 CEL cards, SoS, PF, ToV (MoM?) = 23 -> ~quarter of all cards designed.

Making 75% of printed cards useless, as well as making most important combat cards be played outside of a rules of combat, is not a rational decision.

I've presented chain of events which can lead to this result from a reasonable beginning. You are trying to pick on the "dramatic part" which, obviously, is just a "fluff" to the core of the story, which is spreading the specialized effect of a one corner case card into several and then, being pressed by deadline, making a bad fix for undesired consequences with more corner case cards.

I'm open to hear alternative chain of events, which can lead reasonable people into making 3 SCE cards in Jyhad the was they was. They may not be "clairvoyant or psychic" but in a game with 1/3 of cards dedicated to combat making a card, which ends combat immediately (at C rarity) and to not got a second thought about it looks quite interesting to me.

PS: Some example of reasonable design: much more corner case effect - additional strikes.
Even it was present on 4 cards - Renegade Garu, Acrobatics, Blur and Nimble Feet. Except Garu - all of them are in one discipline, and got clearly defined logic: for one blood you got it at inferior and at superior combining it with some other basic effect of a discipline, for free you got it at superior with weaker version (press) at inferior. Later sets managed to make countless new cards with this effect fully within this logic.

PPS: Please, name any other non unique combat effect requiring inferior discipline and no blood cost which has no corresponding disciplineless combat card is Jyhad?

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20 May 2018 20:28 #87206 by elotar
Replied by elotar on topic SCE

Are you arguing that VTES combat should function more like Durak?


No, i'm recommending you to try this game. It seems to have all you need in a card game, you must totally like it.

:splat: NC Russia
:DEM::san::nec::cap4:

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