Preference for main theme of a first new set

That's interesting and gets around any 'print this card that actually exists as a real card' issues.

I guess KOT and 3rd starters would be a good place to work on?

Surreal wrote:

I am wondering that too. Seems like way too late to think about theme during second round of play testing. All this drama about everything is super confusing.

Well, it seem transparent that the poll is somehow linked to the whole debacle thing over the team. But, if they deliver a good set, regardless of how late or how many hoops they go throught, why would we care about that ?

I was thinking all this time that these cards were being developed/tested that the theme was supposed to be Group 5 Sabbat/fleshing out underdeveloped concepts.

GreenO wrote:

What the theme definitely shouldn't be:
"Masses of impenetrable card text with keywords and abilities that are very difficult for new players to understand that are obviously useful only to seasoned players."

Any expansion set should be asked the question: How does this appeal to new players? If the answer is that it doesn't, you have to question if it's worth releasing. Don't you...?

I'm not sure if I have an answer to this poll since I don't see any need for new cards. For many years, I wanted sets to come out more often being used to the release schedule of CCGs that needed regular influxes of new cards to prevent the games from becoming stale. And, there are plenty of mechanics in the game that can be created or developed. As an example, again, I have a hard time understanding why it's so important to create yet more Sabbat vampires when Laibon vampires are more important to the game's variety, but whatever.

But, I just don't care about fan sets. I was on the design team for a CCG set that never got published that one of the other designers turned into his own set after the game stopped being published. I don't feel any animosity towards his effort; I simply don't care. I've never made any effort to use any of the cards. I'm not going to pitch a fit if my opponents decide to play with the cards (I might even have stories for them about particular cards), but I don't know that I would go to the effort of using them myself.

Or, maybe it's just that I don't care about more cards for games that have massive card pools and that have become ludicrously complicated. I quoted Matt's remarks because I really have no patience anymore for the idea that densely worded cards are a good thing.

Any single card can be as verbose and complicated as Magic's Ice Cauldron. But, with every additional card, you get an exponential complicating effect in a CCG. The harder the card is to process, the greater in magnitude of that effect. As for capturing flavor, flavor can be captured in a lot of ways, not just the 7 lines of text way.

Veteran players can keep dealing (up to a point). But, to Matt's point, the single most important thing with a game is new players. WotC's greatest fear with Magic is not acquiring new players - they say so themselves - because they know that you get just get by on retention. It may seem like V:TES gets by on retention, but I don't think that's truly the case. The people I play with most have only been playing 3-4 years, and we are having a hard time making numbers for regular play.

On the other hand, again referring to Matt's comments, I don't know that fan sets need to be newb friendly or the way to sell people on the game. I'd be more inclined to establish clean, simple online play to draw in new players. And, I'd be inclined to simplify the existing game, removing the mechanics that just don't carry their weight - scarce, sterile, blood curse, red list, trophy, research area, and probably a few others. Cleaning up what already exists will annoy some, but it always amazes me when someone new decides to get into this game; there's just so much baggage.