Share ideas how to use community more in new card design

Surreal wrote:

I can personally say that I don't feel excited about new PDF set because I know nothing about it and what the timetable really is and how sets are planned to be done in future. I just say there could be lot of positive things to be offered about thinking about how to make community feel more involved of the whole game.

Since this is the first time through the process, you're basically not going to be able to predict the future with any certainty.

Part of the point of the first set will, surely, be to learn how well it works. No point laying down now that new sets will be done every X months, if reality shows that a good process takes longer than that, or much less time than that, or is very difficult to pin down in that way at all.

Surreal wrote:

Dorrinal wrote:

I challenge the OP to demonstrate that using the community in card design is somehow more desirable.

With design perspectives it is not necessary more desirable and I never said I wanted total open playtesting. My point was more to make all players more excited and feel more involved with this whole new process. I can personally say that I don't feel excited about new PDF set because I know nothing about it and what the timetable really is and how sets are planned to be done in future. I just say there could be lot of positive things to be offered about thinking about how to make community feel more involved of the whole game.

So you're not excited about the set, and you assume you're not alone. That's fair. But how is that relevant? What is "excitement" and how does increasing it make the new cards any better? How does making the "community feel more involved" increase the quality of the finished product? These are the assertions you need to support because there is no obvious connection.

Dorrinal wrote:

So you're not excited about the set, and you assume you're not alone. That's fair. But how is that relevant? What is "excitement" and how does increasing it make the new cards any better? How does making the "community feel more involved" increase the quality of the finished product? These are the assertions you need to support because there is no obvious connection.

We are talking about different things. Maybe topic should had been "Share ideas how to use community more in the whole game." Quality of the finished products will be or not be increased when "community feel more involved". I have no idea about that and that is not the point. Stroyline tournaments didn't make card design better (some could say it made it even worse) but it made community feel more involved and "excited".

The reason why topic reads "Share ideas how to use community more in new card design" is because I feel there is good chance to make community feel more involved with card design. Like cards designed by big tournamets winners or some card designing competitions etc. Also now that cards will be pdf I feel there is chance to make storylines in EC, NAC and other tournaments.

Maybe these kind of things are discussed in Inner Circle forums. I have no idea and that is my problem. I feel there is lot of opportunities to gain with "For fans by fans" mentality but now whole new set design seems very distant. It makes me feel alienated of the game. There could be even some small suggestions how to make situation better (blogs, interviews etc). That is what this topic is about also.

Using community more would make at least me more interested of the whole game. I don't know about others. We can have different views also because I think you play mainly on JOL and biggest thing for me with VTES is sociality. I just want to feel "excited" of the whole game and how things are done now. Also I feel it is getting harder to make weekly games in Helsinki with previous big playerbase. I don't know reason for that. I just wanna play the game.

Surreal wrote:

We are talking about different things. Maybe topic should had been "Share ideas how to use community more in the whole game." Quality of the finished products will be or not be increased when "community feel more involved". I have no idea about that and that is not the point. Stroyline tournaments didn't make card design better (some could say it made it even worse) but it made community feel more involved and "excited".

(...)

Like cards designed by big tournamets winners or some card designing competitions etc. Also now that cards will be pdf I feel there is chance to make storylines in EC, NAC and other tournaments.

(...)

This has happened.
I await VEKN's statement.

Ashur made a really good point previously. He pointed out that WW, which had an authoritarian approach to card design, produced a lot of bad cards. Having a small team or even one person in control of set design does not mean that the product will be good. It does mean that if the person or persons in control are doing badly, there is no check on them.

Conversely there is no reason to think that a community-designed set will be good, but I'm also not sure there is proof that it would be bad.

I like the idea of a devoted design team having both the authority and the responsibility to make design decisions with the player base acting as a kind of check to find problems or as a source of ideas or expertise. If a designer does not fulfill his responsibility, then he should lose his authority. If the player base is apathetic, then the design team can do what it wants.

Aaron wrote:

Conversely there is no reason to think that a community-designed set will be good, but I'm also not sure there is proof that it would be bad.

A significant problem with a design process that is driven heavily by voting (or a similar 'community approval' mechanism) is that will almost inevitably favour areas that are already popular. It's just simple numbers - lots of people already play the Brujah, this card is great for the Brujah, lots of people vote for it. This fun little card for the uber-unpopular Samedi? Not going to attract so many votes. Fewer people are enthused about it, fewer people vote for it.

In psrticular, if sets are intended to be of a fixed (or closely limited) size, I'm tactically influenced by what I want for my deck, rather than what is objectively better for the game overall. If I vote for the cards that are better overall, it'll harm the chances of the cards that will help my deck going in.


This is potentially fine if you're happy with eye-catching stuff for areas that attract a lot of player interest already being expanded. But it's going to make it potentially very hard to nurture under-developed, unpopular areas into something more playable.