New set in 2012

Izaak wrote:

If alienating players is your goal, then these kind of responses are exactly what you need. Keep 'em coming.

Explain what is alienating in that, because it escape me. As you say, a lot of the dutch player think that VEKN is a fan organization without autority. So why exactly do they care if they do something they don't like provided they are not impacted ?

You talk like you and other dutch player recognize the VEKN as being an important organisation, but don't like its decisions. It's not the same at all than dismissing it as some independant bad fan movement.

The way I look at it is this: change nothing, the game continues and slowly dies out eventually. Release fan sets and you split the playerbase into two not neccesarily equally sized groups and the game dies out a little bit faster.

I think you just missed the third option: thx to vekn releases the game will continue and maybe even grow. For me trying to do something is much better than doing nothing in this situation. And I can see no reason why existing of pdf expansion could do any charm if it would be designed by professionals which is a case. Personally, I think, it will be the most thought-out and balanced release in vtes history

I personally find it you dismizz Izaak's fears too easily. I for one is not interested in having VEKN develop cards in general, and not releasing a PDF set in particular. I fail to see how releasing another set is going to attract new players. Allowing fan-made cards from some people but not others is hardly intuitive to new players or those out of the loop. It's far easier to just play with real cards released by WOTC/WW. I believe the burden is on the VEKN to prove 1) How releasing the new set is going to end up with a net gain of (active) players and 2) What sort of void the new set is going to fill.

Cyrus wrote:

Allowing fan-made cards from some people but not others is hardly intuitive to new players or those out of the loop.

But then again, the proponent of the initiative does not believe thoses to be "fan-made card". They believe that, since the one who design thoses cards were the ones building and testing official set, and since VEKN is for them the official body, that already do erratas and tournaments, the set is official, not fan-made.

Also, the set seem not targeted at new player. It seem targeted at avoiding stagnation and death of the game. That's different.

Ohlmann wrote:

But then again, the proponent of the initiative does not believe thoses to be "fan-made card". They believe that, since the one who design thoses cards were the ones building and testing official set, and since VEKN is for them the official body, that already do erratas and tournaments, the set is official, not fan-made.

Also, the set seem not targeted at new player. It seem targeted at avoiding stagnation and death of the game. That's different.

I can't speak for other playtest groups, but the one I was in (for several expansions) didn't really do anything I would call "building" or "designing" the sets. I'd call it fine tuning, not creating. In my mind there's a big difference between the two, I consider myself rather good at trying out new cards and finding strengths, weaknesses, weird rule stuff and things like that. I would not want to even try creating cards from scratch, and decide what discipline/clan/sect should get them. It's possible that other playtest groups (the ones including the creators of this new set, for example) did more than my group though. That others did help LSJ to actually create the cards, and not just change them slightly.
Just wanted to put that into the discussion here, since I've seen a few posts talking about how the current creators were involved in creating previous expansions as well and I'm not sure if they were involved in the actual design or if they (like me) just helped adjust the power level of the cards. Either way, I'm not sure if that really matters.

Even if their experiences from playtesting are the same as mine, that does not at all mean the new cards will be horrible. I have some small fears for the new cards, as always when a new set is about to be released.
However, I do think that the playtesting will be more thorough than earlier. Partly because I imagine the current design team feels a heavier burden than LSJ did. Not that LSJ didn't care for the game or took it seriously, I love what he did. But the new team is just that. New. This usually leads to smaller, safer steps, being a bit more nervous and doublechecking stuff. I'm guessing the new cards will end on the lower end of good rather than the high end, and I think would be good.

My only real fear, personally, is for the new set to include cards like Villein/Vessel. Cards that punishes other cards by name or function too hard. I've seen a lot of card suggestions like that in the forums, and my thoughts are that broken cards should be fixed by errata or banning, not by releasing cards that hurt the current top tier decks. Other than that I don't really see how some 30 new cards could ruin this game. And if those new cards actually do end up ruining the game, there's always the option to ban them or revoke the use of them in tournaments (or of course, if everyone else thinks they're great your group can just not use them and enjoy casual games).

talonz wrote:

Several issues here;

-who apointed these designers
-what did they do to get this position (legitimacy as you point out, doesnt come from player background either...I hope there was an actual process of 'design a new card, explain why this new card is needed, what it addresses, what problems it creates and how it can be countered' etc. Without which, these designers have been given carte blanche purely on their player experience.

I think you missed the point of my post, which is that LSJ's status as a part-time employee of WW didn't somehow make him a better designer. Just like the current designers, he was only some guy doing his best. I'm guessing that you didn't do any playtesting or work on storylines or otherwise interact with WW in any way; suffice it to say that they weren't exactly doing anything beyond the bare minimum to support the game, when it came to its design. It was basically outsourced from the time they switched to the NWOD, if not long before. So claiming that lacking the white wolfprint logo is going to somehow affect the quality of the new cards just doesn't make sense.