Two levels of the game

I'm sorry about spam of posts in broken english but somehow I got stream of ideas and need to write them so they stop clogging my head

I think one point, which is lost in many discussions of the game, is that VtES, as played by most partisipants of this forum (and players of the top events) greatly differs from VtES, which is played by new and casual players.

But, unfortunately, the only way to get players into "top" game is by "upgrading" new/casual players, who like their game and got enough zeal to spend time and money to improve.

So when somebody is saying something like "the game is fine", usually having in mind the "top" one, he may be right in general, but he misses the point.

As we can't, as like in MTG, to separate casual and competitive players, as usually there are both types present at any table, than all our decisions about the game has to have in consern both thouse groups. And the second group, as i see, is mostly ignored by now.

And ? What's your point ?

I have always enjoyed my Jyhad/VtES games because of that...
A meeting of different players from everywhere and with varying playing levels.
Some players seem to risk their own life with every pool they lose or vp they win, some are playing crappy decks but are funny fellows, some simply want to be 1st world ranked... And we still play the same game !

We don't even need a publisher !!! Lol
(Even if a good one would be a nice news)

Vlad wrote:

And ? What's your point ?

My point for a long time is that VtES is by now is very bad as a casual game, so flaw of new players is small, so the playerbase is shrinking.

For example at Genova I got two games sitting next to combat weenie, not influensing vampires and just discurding cards. The was some intresting table politics going on so the games was fun for me, but for most new players even one such game will be their last.

And we know, that weenies is not a problem for the game at high level - there are countless ways to counter them if you know what you are doing, but on the low level they are a problem, so it will still be beneficial for the game to limit them somehow.

And obviously weenies are just one example of countless other such things in VtES, from some individual cards to just size of the cardpool, or rules bloat or other things.

We can do whatever we want for the game and the casual crowd won't notice it since vast majority of them probably won't visit here and see any changes we made to the game (for them).

They play the game the way they want with their mates and the tournament scene won't effect their style of play one way or another. So why even consider starting tweaking the game to cater to them, and, mot likely, the only effect would be to alienate the current "serious" player base?

Lönkka wrote:

We can do whatever we want for the game and the casual crowd won't notice it since vast majority of them probably won't visit here.

Maybe it's different in "big VtES nations", but here and, as I understand, in many other places, there is no separate "casual crowd". We got like 25+/- players in the comunity, from which i think 4 are semi-competiteve (as I've seen at EC we have a long way before us to became a good players ) and everybody else are casuals/new.

And so at each table at weakly games or even tournament we got players from "both worlds", and we can feel their suffering. B)

I think that can be said about almost every aspect of our lives where skill matters. Professionalls will have easy way against amatours. You can organize "amatours only" events (using f.e. ranking points , if you have too many you can't play in the event) but I think current "fresh players" base is not big enough for it to make sense.
From the card design point of view, casual play is treated very seriously. Most new cards (pdf sets) are created more for casual players than having tournament scene in mind.