I would give anything new a shot! There also seems to be a theme in this thread akin to ideas about what a good reboot of the original game would be, and on that note, here is my 2 cents.

I think there are 2 main groups of consumers for this game, the "new players" and the "already players" (i know there are more and subsets, but i view these 2 as the main ones).

I think a vtes reboot needs to be able to stay true to itself enough to maintain a majority of "already players" but adjust to be more accessible to "new players".

In that regard, i think a LCG format for sets and clear wording would do a good deal to move in that direction.

Next, i think something like a Magic:TG "Type 2" standard (where the latest core set and 2 to 6 expansion sets are legal, and then the "new" core set comes out and that and what follows is legal) is used.

The combination of an LCG format as well as a TYPE 2 style play helps new players not feel overwhelmed, and have more access to the game.

Also, some new 3 player variant that also take place in tournaments. You could have your normal 4/5 player tournament games, and then a seperate tournament that is 3 players with some variant to make it interesting (off the top of my head, everyone looses a pool every turn, and/or bleeds are base 2, or there is also a communal hand everyone can draw from). The more people are playing, the more likely new and old players will want to play, and i think a 3 player variant could go a long way to that.

There was an interview with richard garfield www.vtesinla.org/articleGarfield.htm where he says "Jyhad was designed to board game standards of length" and "Jyhad was my second TCG, and I wanted to prove that TCGs were a form of game as potentially diverse as board games". I think the most common prism VTES is viewed through is the prism of "it's a ccg" and I think that's a mistake. As a ccg, it can't compete with Magic for that demographic and win. But viewed as a board game that just happens to use cards instead of a board, a whole new outlook opens, and I think moving to an LCG would fit with a boardgame feel and would help alot.

Lastly, i feel like after VTES went to white wolf, the VTES engine never really got tuned a whole lot with a view toward "stream lining". Richard Garfield did an AWESOME job at creating new and innovative game engines, but WotC, over time, has tuned and streamlined magic, where I feel White Wolf, more often than not, just heaped on more stuff to the engine. The best example is the hunters set, which flavor-wise was cool, but did nothing to tune the vtes engine, just bog it down. Then engine NEEDS tuning: through a single card outlay format, clearer wording, as well as stripping out stuff. Although it would be costly to investors, i don't think it would be the worst idea to see hunters, antitribu, and the Laibon leave.

gymim wrote:


As an old MTG player I would just like to chime in with a resounding NO. Type 2 is a horrible invention. As I see it, it generates several results.

* A forced money-sink for the players, since all the big tournaments are T2.
* A more sloppy integration with earlier cards. Since T2 is the big important thing, the main playtesting is done with T2 in mind. Not with the whole game, this leaving the players who want to play with all the cards they've invested in with a game thats becoming increasingly less balanced.
* Less possible deck types which leads to a less varied meta. More legal cards = more combinations = more potential deck types.
* An ostensibly easier way for new players to join the game - but since T2 is where the big tournaments are held you will run into the "big tournament players" right away. This is of course both good and bad.

So, while I see that the results of T2 would make a newbie-friendly format the main problem is that T2 is also the main tournament level format. If T2 would have been the "newbie"-format that you began playing and then went on to the "harder" T1 format where you can play with all cards then I agree that T2 could be a good entry-level. However, since Wotc wanted people to keep buying cards (see: money-sink) they let T2 be the main tournament format to get all old players to keep buying cards.

This is imho the largest mistake with T2.

But, I am very very doubtful that anyone would have cared about T2 at all if they had made T1 the main tournament format. So if you would choose to do it the other way around (letting T1 be the main tournament format, but having T2 as a secondary format for new players and players who enjoy playing with a limited card pool) then I'm not sure that T2 will actually be fun/large enough to make any real impact...

Mainly, I think that the T1/T1.5/Extended/T2 split of M:tG is mainly about grabbing more money from the players and not something that should be encouraged in new games.

It does not have to be a cycling Type 2 like Magic though. One could have an extended format with the old cards and a restricted format with all the cards printed by the new publisher only.

gymim wrote:

I actually hate the LCG idea. Having solidly designed starters will replace the concept of LCG sets. The 'collectible' nature of the game I enjoy and even with knocking out the Laibon (which I'll talk about later) means that you cannot fit everything you need for a large set (e.g. 150 library cards + crypt) into sensible LCG packs without basically building the entire game into Precons and removing the 'rarity' effect.
gymim wrote:
I HATE this idea. This is one of the biggest reasons I left MtG. If that becomes a dominating feature of competitive VTES, then I will probably just ignore running formal tournaments and I don't know if anyone in my playgroup would continue playing.

gymim wrote:
KevinM has talked along with others about developing the Rapid Thought concept. There have been times where I've planned to include a Rapid Thought round into my league. It might be worth having 3 Player Ratings for Constructed, Draft and Rapid Thought and then to build up that format.

gymim wrote:
As a head-to-head CCG, sure it fails. But most of the players I've met who play VTES have played MtG and HATE the Mexican Standoff/Ro-sham-bo/Scissors-paper-rock-lizard-spock which is competitive MtG. So it can always compete against MtG because it is NOT a head-to-head game; it is a multiplayer CCG (which is closer to the boardgame reference I think Richard was making). To think that the playerbase of VTES is going to cross-over with the usual MtG playerbase I think is to not recognise the differences in the nature of VTES and MtG.
gymim wrote:
That may be the case, but there are plenty of people suggesting restructuring of the game. Some are doing it publicly, others privately. There are plenty of good minds who are now in position to be empowered during the 'torpor time' to work on ideas that have not been welcome when VTES was a financial concern of a company. I'm hoping that during this period of Torpor for VTES we can rebuild the weaker parts of the game and ensure that it becomes an even better and more solid game for the future.

I agree entirely that having a T2 mtg equivalent is the worst thing vtes can do.
for several reasons. hasbro can afford to pump out wallpaper as 75-80% of a set, so they have been for the duration of the game (see Mercadian masques onward). there are some sets with alot of playable commons, and good uncommons, but there are always way more bad cards than good. the worst part is that the junk rare to good rare ratio is always somewhat skewed, but junk rares crop up in packs more often than good ones. if we look at a booster pack of lets say ravnica from mtg and a booster of keepers, mtg is just as likely to have lightning helix or a guildmage (both okish to good level cards at the time ravnica was in t2, prices ranging from $1 to maybe $3.50 initially, and you'd want to own 4 regardless of what you were putting in a deck) as it was to have halcyon glaze or goliath spider (both cards that were always about 25 cents and never really played competitively) wereas keepers could give you perfect paragon, old friends, or dark influences at best, and something like a hunting ground, wooden stake, or vulrability at worst. the rares are similar. we've all popped the dreaded viralax facility, but in MTG, during ravnica, you wanted one of the several good rares in the set. specifically, the duel lands. but popping a duel was like popping an enkil cog. but there were 4 duels in the base ravnica set, and there wasn't much room for "ok" rares. good or junk.

i stopped playing mtg because of how much staying competitive in t2 costs. and they changed their rules.

vtes putting out a base set and making hard to get cards available later on (within 2-3 years of a base set being made) would be just as good at drawing newbies in and would keep all the original players as well. different formats makes no sense in the long haul for vtes, its a marketing model that barely works for mtg in terms of retaining players from when the game was in its early years.

now, copyin mtg in their little ovals that say how complicated a product is would be fine. base set decks and boosters being "beginner", some sort of box set with boosters and pre decided cards similar to the 3rd edition players kit or a mtg fat pack (think about a $30 box set with 40 beads, a book of rules with some fluff, 3 boosters, and maybe a set amount of reprints just by themselves or 2 "step up" decks with good reprints included into 2 playable decks for someone just graduating stealthbleed, like a 2nd trad wall or lawfirm votes) as a "novice" level. then subsequent sets would be the "experienced/expert/whatever" level. as long as the base set is obtainable, new players would be easy to attract, or at least as easy as at any point, if the starters for the base set were easy enough, ie stealthhbleed, weenie wall, weenie obfuscate, celerity guns, weenie potence... all done simply.

i think just adding more simple cards in with reprints, new vamps, and some just good but simple new library cards is the optimal way to go for vtes, not restructuring the whole thing. but a different game in similar setting could probably do that.

I explicitly quit MtG and L5R once they switched to Type 2 format. It was because VTES never went to such a format is why I stayed. Found out I wasn't the only one. Type 2 format would likely be the death of this game.

Now an evergreen print of core cards -- or better yet, licensed print-at-home (get .gif of card, print it on paper, slip it into sleeve w/ a VTES card or glue it onto a spare VTES card) -- that'd help new players.

Take a core of Master cards (Blood Doll, Minion Tap, Tribute to the Master, Sudden, Discipline Masters, Barrens, Dreams, etc.) and a core of Minion cards (4 core commons from each discipline, KRC, Bum's/Ambush/Harass, Computer Hacking, Arson, Wake/Forced/Vive/Fillip, etc.) and then just slap on "License-for-Print-to-Play, legal for tournament play."

Not only does it get new players the base cards necessary to play -- without issues of lack of access to core cards -- it also gets these old cards out of any new printed set, avoiding glutting out newer cards. It's just a cleaner solution, and other CCGs already do it (MtG: older basic lands are legal, L5R: basic clan holdings are legal, etc.). Needs more Deflections? Go print more at home and slap it on your copies of Gird Minions...

I think the powers that be are already in your method of thinking.

And I quote:


4. Tournament Game Rules

4.1. Cards Allowed

All cards in a player's deck must be genuine Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Jyhad cards or official V:EKN issued cards from the only authoritative source www.vekn.net. When using V:EKN issued cards they must be color printed on standard paper and inserted into opaque sleeves before another Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Jyhad card, this requires opaque sleeves for the whole crypt and/or library.
So any official V:EKN issued cards can be done this way.
So in theory the rules are already in place for this kind of thing.

DR.

I keep trying to think of why a LCG printing would be worse than a CCG printing, and I can't really come up with a reason. Conceptually, I don't like the idea of a LCG - it smacks of limiting the variety of a game while trying to remove aspects of collectibility.

But, in practice, not being experienced enough with LCGs, I don't see how it changes anything. Rarity, at the aggregate level, achieves the same effect as determining how many copies of each card gets printed in a fixed set. When you need X copies of a card to build a deck, you can buy Y sets rather than N number of boxes of random packs. Precons for this game display a LCG nature. In theory, you can also trade, though I would expect people of my ilk to largely be looking to trade for the same cards, a feature CCGs already have.

Removing randomness does prevent a lot of possibilities for limited play, of course.

I'm just curious as to whether I'm missing some real world phenomena rather than the feeling that LCGs are more boardgamey than CCGs. Do LCGs end up costing more for those who want to build certain decks since people are constantly paying for cards they know they won't use? Hm, that's pretty much how CCGs work now, as well.

Speaking of boardgameiness, I have found it rather normal for V:TES and other multiplayer CCGs to move in a boardgameish direction. I also understand that the boardgame model, including expansion of boardgames, does quite well where the CCG model seems to have leveled off. Ultimately, when you stop expanding a CCG, how is it different from a boardgame with an absurd number of parts? Isn't is just the nature of Customizable Card Games that you build your own components for the game that separates the two when taken to an extreme (compare Dominion to a CCG)?

As for Magic's Standard format, I've tried to mine my collection for Legacy and I simply can't compete. Even if I have the cards for one Legacy competitive deck, I doubt I have the sideboard cards to compete in tournament play. That's one deck. I'm hardly interested in playing a CCG where I have one viable deck.

Yes, it's ridiculous how expensive most Standard tournament decks are, running $300-400 if bought as singles almost every time I've looked at the price of such decks. Yet, how much more expensive is a format that doesn't restrict to the latest core set and two blocks? And, who in their right mind thinks that Vintage is less of a burden than Standard?

But, put aside the cost for a moment, since it's obvious that there are plenty of people who can afford to compete at Magic. My lack of interest in having competitive Legacy decks isn't so much cost, it's time and effort. I've made a pass on my Magic collection to pull out tournament level cards. There are tons and tons of holes. The sheer number of cards missing to build an interesting (to me) assortment of decks is so vast that the effort to hunt down all of the miscellaneous cards, cost not being considered as a lot of them are uncommons, is daunting.

For quite some time, I've been of the belief that the hating on Magic's formats is due to not really understanding that they have no other choice. They have over 10,000 different cards. Magic cards combine in ways that cards in most other CCGs don't. Sure, playtesting focuses on Standard ... because vigorous playtesting a game with 10,000+ distinct components is madness. Furthermore, I too often see comments that one's collection routinely goes obsolete. Actually, Magic constantly brings back older cards through their core sets. Now, it is true that most cards in the game will never be Standard legal ever again, so I understand the general sentiment, but it's simply not true that you never get to play old cards in newer formats.

The newbie is far more capable to get in and compete at a CCG when the card pool is smaller and the cards needed have been printed more recently. But, besides that, there are numerous benefits to rotating card pools. All expanded games suffer from mechanics bloat. Improvements in design, development, and wording happen over time (normally) to where older cards often pale in terms of balance and clarity. Metagames are more lively than when older power cards are removed to make room for newer cards. Set rotation is something of a reset button. And, as Magic does, can always bring back well-designed cards from the past.

I just get the sense that people against set rotation are people who spent money on a game and want to stop, that they want their old decks to always be tournament viable. That's really not a CCG model. While good for the oldtimer moneywise, it's incredibly unfriendly to the newb or even just someone who missed out on key older cards. Though, in an ideal world, everything old is new again. Old cards get reprinted, putting them into the hands of newbs. Old strategies resurface as metagame winners, rewarding the old timers for having built those decks in the past.

I think a LCG and type 2 style format would be good at removing alot of the "overwhelmed" feeling any new players may get. Also, (i've mentioned this in another thread) i think digital copies of cards sold directly from the company would do alot as well. The enduser buys the LCG box for the set he/she wants, then goes online and buys digital singles at a cost of .50 to 1.50 to sculpt their deck. They download the digital singles, print them out and cut them out, and then they are off and running. Piracy would be an issue, but if you've ever tried to cut out 60 to 90 cards that you've printed out, then you know the time and effort make you just want to buy the cards. Someone could try and sell them, but they would have to be lower than the online cost a decent percentage of the time.

This definitely slows the sale of multiple boxs of box "X", as the end consumer only needs one, but the profit should be made up in the sale of a single box to multiple people combined with sales of singles online.

This would hopefully maintain if not increase sales, while increasing the player base, which increases interest, which then feeds off itself more and more.

I get that the CCG model has its advantages, but I personally don't feel that VTES competes in that market well, and I think it could compete in a different style of market in a much better fashion that would increase revenue as well as player base.

Azel wrote:
I'd support VTES "Type 2" (and then VTES "classic") only if a game company printed a new, 300-card base set, and had intentions of printing a new, 300 (ish) card set once per year.

That, and assuming the card choices for the sets, especially the first one, was done by Peal & Co., and the rulebook and card text was standardized and thoroughly revised by Pascal & Co., I think we would add to the game, not subtract from it.