New set in 2012

Izaak wrote:

Brum:
3) The VEKN IC is not some sort of holy circle of perfect people. They make mistakes too. Their two biggest ones being complete lack of communication and appointing invisible "old-school fans" as movers and shakers.

I see the VEKN a group of people making an effort and I commend them for that.

Our local play group plays using VEKN rules as they're the standard for tournament play — if you want to play at a tournament level you need to work with these rules. As the VEKN sets the tournament rules, the new set will of course be tournament legal — this alone makes it a step above a random fan-set and I'm supportive of it.

Izaak wrote:

Seriously Kevin, what are you trying to accomplish with these pedantic one-liners? I'm probably wasting my time even trying to discuss things with you,...

What a rotten attitude. I'm asking you questions and I'm attempting to have a conversation with you, and you're acting like a jerk.

If the nature of a forum is such that you don't like what you're seeing people ask of you in response to what you're posting, maybe you should reexamine what you're posting, why it would generate the responses that you're getting, and why your attitude is so venomous.

Izaak wrote:

You should be well aware of an alternative, as I offered you -personally- right after the NC meeting at the EC 2010 in Paris to:

a) Take a very good look at the Archon and make better tableseatings for the obvious problematic tournament sizes (them being anything smaller than 15, 21 and 29-37 from top of my head)
b) Help out in designing a new -and better- ranking system. Making a ranking system that's working is hard. Programming it in php with an upload script is trivial.

You told me my help was not needed at that point in time and you'd get in touch if it was. You never did, which is fine, but ya know, we're 13 months into the future and nothing happened.

I'm sorry that you misunderstood. I didn't say "Your help is not needed" since I don't dismiss people like that and I don't talk like that. (Perhaps you didn't mean this literally?)

What I said to you about the Archon was that David Tatu and I had already made better 2R+F tables for all the small tournament sizes, and that my understanding was that the math is such that making new 3R+F tables for the really small tournaments wasn't possible, so there was no reason to do it.

What I said to you about the rating system is that since I had been told that someone was working on it, I didn't think that you needed to work on something that was already being worked on.

I'm sorry that you took those comments personally and I'm sorry that I didn't direct you to Oscar or a better person with whom to speak.

Cyrus wrote:

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.

Here, I'll give you some answers:

Nothing is likely going to end up with a 'net gain of active players', short of a company selling the game once more. Lacking that, the player base is almost certainly going to decline. However, releasing a new set is likely to slow that decline down. Why? Because players are going to fall into one of three categories:

1) Players that are willing to keep playing the game with the cards currently in existence;

2) Players that are willing to keep playing the game only if new cards continue to be available

3) Players that are unwilling to keep playing the game whether or not new cards come out.

Group 3) is irrelevant; they're gone. Group 1 is going to keep playing the game whether or not new cards come out, because nothing VEKN is doing is taking cards out of their hands, or making it illegal for them to play, or anything along those lines.

Admittedly, it is going to change what cards can be played in 'official' tournaments - but very few players are going to stop playing the game entirely -just- because some of the organized tournaments (i.e. the vekn-run ones) use cards they dislike. Nothing stops those players from playing at home, or running their own 'WotC/WW cards only' events, or any other form of play.

Group 2, on the other hand, is going to stick around and keep playing because of what VEKN is doing. And they won't stick around if that doesn't happen.

Honestly, the block to 'grow the player base' will have almost nothing to do with whether these cards are designed and distributed or not; whether or not new players enter the game is going to largely depend on the job volunteers do in keeping the game active and visible and viable.

Y'know, volunteers like the people that make up VEKN...

-John Flournoy
Prince of Chicago, IL.

Izaak wrote:

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.

Release nothing and it withers away nevertheless.
I think that with VEKN sanctioned new sets we'll have a better chance than not doing anything.

Izaak wrote:

I don't think we'll be here organizing ECs and NACs 5 years from now so why would you want to lose players just so all the stayers can play with 25 new crypt cards.

Certainly not with a negative attitude.
Then again, I've also been actively involved with the naysayers/pessimists (a pessimist is a realistic optimist...)

Izaak wrote:

This whole legality issue has been blown way out of proportion. I'm perfectly allowed YADDAYADDAYADDA

Just cutting it short, no offence meant.
Would YOU like to test that against CCP/WW/WotC lawyers?
Would YOU like to be a person in responsability in our free, voluntary oraganization in a situation like that?

Izaak wrote:

The VEKN IC is not some sort of holy circle of perfect people. They make mistakes too. Their two biggest ones being complete lack of communication and appointing invisible "old-school fans" as movers and shakers.

The IC consists of people who have during the years devoted gargantuan amount of free time to this game without any compensation and keep on doing it. Insiniuating that they are in their current positions without any proper merits for their positions is quite insulting.

Just out of curiosity, do you have better choices for ICs in hand? Or do you just want to fight The Man?


Izaak, I don't know you but to me it seems that you're quite anactive person who wants to be involved. Do you think you could put that energy into benefitting VEKN in some way? The organization needs energetic and active people!

I've said it previously, but will repeat myself again.
I have noting more than utter and total respect for people like Jussi, Gines, Emiliano, Johannes, Pascal, the ICs etc who devote countles hours to run VEKN adn this site behind the scenes! You guys are the greatest!

Izaak wrote:

What you -and VEKN apparently as well- failed to realize is that the VAST majority of active players DO NOT read this forum. They aren't even registered here. They are pointed to VEKN.net (by me for example), see an annoying to read website in work unfriendly colors, with news updated 6 months ago (until yesterday).

I find that rather unlikely that with 1000 members on board we wouldn't have the vast majority of active players with us already.

If the forum/site is good the colours don't matter. YMMV.
Why update news for just the sake of it?


I've been known to be blunt and direct but I've noticed that in the internet you have to be a little less direct since the personal contact of a regular or even phone conversation is not there. Like Suoli just said, people from all over the world attend this forum and it would be nice to take their customs into account as to avoid unnecessary conflicts or misunderstandings.

Lönkka wrote:

Izaak wrote:

What you -and VEKN apparently as well- failed to realize is that the VAST majority of active players DO NOT read this forum. They aren't even registered here. They are pointed to VEKN.net (by me for example), see an annoying to read website in work unfriendly colors, with news updated 6 months ago (until yesterday).

I find that rather unlikely that with 1000 members on board we wouldn't have the vast majority of active players with us already.

If the forum/site is good the colours don't matter. YMMV.
Why update news for just the sake of it?

Isaak's points are valid.

There are lot of players that used to post semi-regularly to the newsgroup whom I have never seen post here, unless they are using unrecognizable new pseudonyms. That doesn't mean they are not reading, but I don't know if they are.

This forum is less user-friendly than the newsgroup. A lighter color scheme, like then one used on the VEKN in France forum, would be more visually pleasing. I'm not saying it's bad here, but I certainly preferred the newsgroup, which was finally killed a few months ago by inexplicable spambots.

The following is my interpretation of my play groups mood, since you asked for it;

Brum wrote:

You playgroup isn't happy about the new cards? Were they happy when they where released by CCP?

Actully I do belive no, that there came to new expansions out to often. I know all the good reasons for this, but that dosent mean that we need to like it.

Brum wrote:

If so, what's the difference? LSJ isn't here?

As said, its not so. But yes there is a big differenc(to come);

Brum wrote:

Paper print VS real cards from real boosters? (To me that discussion has nothing to do with VtES, as I explained).

But it dose have something to do with v:tes for alot of others. v:tes is/was a CCG/TCG some of us like that in a game. Some dosent, I fully respect that people dosent like that aspect, as long as they can respect that some of use like that aspect of a card game.

Brum wrote:

The fact that now there's no possibility of collecting or trading the new material? This is a mute point, because there's nothing to do about that. I regret it also.

Agreed on this one. And thats also why you dont see me stading around yelling not knowing what im talking about. I _know_ the options, but that dosent mean I need to like them. We will with 99,5% accept the set and using it, since we like the tournements, like the players and love the game, but we will not be seeing it as optimal, or as something we would see the need for. For me there are still a million decks in the all ready cards needed to be discovered and tried, before new toys was needed.

Brum wrote:

Is it a problem to you guys that now the player's ideas will be taken into account? I fail to see this as bad.

It is a problem that there is no company behind yes. I fail to see that players ideas wasent taken into account earliere. But yes, ultimatly Im sceptic about that, I really, really liked the fact that Scott wasent a tournement player, since he was in a position to observe and design/rule not based on bad personal tournement experience. One of the things Im a bit sceptic about with Floppy, I know Floppy and he is a great guy, who would do a great job, but I just liked the fact of a rules guy who understood the game but could view it in a broarder perspetive.

Brum wrote:

Besides the delivery system, LSJ leaving and the fact that players have a more direct impact in what comes out, there's no real difference from CCP times.

Are you serious ?!? If you look at v:tes now and v:tes 3 years ago, would you dismiss the difference as minor?

Brum wrote:

Maybe people didn't know how things were done before and are just now discovering issues with the whole process.
Ok - that is also a healthy discussion, but if they didn't leave the game before, there's no reason to leave now.

Still, and here comes the big difference from now and then imho. There was a company involved, there was money involved, and that made it all more legimit. Trust me, if v:tes had never gone to the printers but only realeased ans a print'n'play game it peroberly wouldent exist to day. There is just a hell of a big difference. Its clearly here, lets say that Walch & Nusser (or some others) have gotten the rights for the game, _no one_ would have questioned the design process, even if it was the same as today. You might say that this is stupid, or it dosent make any sense, but thats the way it is.

/Jesper

Brum wrote:

Except, of course, the collecting issue and crafts / handy work being more important than VtES.