Long Term Investment

i think that rarety in vtes is a strange thing with many sets. r2 and similar ratings make less sense to me than "i've seen 2 tupdogs from one box of LoB and 3 from another"
the amount of cards available hasn't deterred many players i've tried to get into the game as much as the learning curve of the game has just by its nature. we're alot more complicated than magic, but the intellectual capacity needed is one of the benefits of the game as well.
a new company printing us will be aware that some people would buy a pallet of booster displays to get enough summon histories to build a house out of. they will also see how well a product sells based upon how much use players get out of whats in it.
the heirs precons sold like crazy, but nights of reckoning booster boxes aren't on my personal want list.
everything is a factor, its a matter of what you would like to see as the future of vtes.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

we're alot more complicated than magic, but the intellectual capacity needed is one of the benefits of the game as well.

Well I don't agree with this. Complicated rules doesn't mean that game needs intellectual capacity. I feel best game design is the total opposite. Vtes just requires lot of dedication to master the rules and remember all cards (+some errata). Best design for me is simple to learn but difficult to master. I also feel Magic requires a lot of thinking and tournament + draft play works amazing with that game. I don't even get why Vtes is compared to MTG. I feel those games are trying to get a very different players and I feel only similar thing is only that both games use cards. Maybe you could compare Vtes to AGoT LCG. I would say it is the social aspect you need in Vtes, MTG requires the analytic mind.

What I feel in Vtes is that the game play basics are amazing. I don't like basics of MTG. I like that in Vtes I can draw a card when I play a card and the game is crypt minion driven. Making costs with your life is also great. Richard Garfield is really one of the best game designers ever. But I also feel Vtes has a lot of useless rules and mechanisms which just makes the game unnecessary complicated without necessary adding much for the whole game.

Surreal wrote:

But I also feel Vtes has a lot of useless rules and mechanisms which just makes the game unnecessary complicated without necessary adding much for the whole game.

Well, VtES is the older CCG in the market that hadn't had grand-scale rule rewriting. The rule of magic are "simple" and clean because they have been cleaned and thousands of card errated.

As good as Garfield is, he haven't found the right balance in rule quantity in the first try. Nor in the second

Yea, that is true also. I bet first editions of MTG was a mess. When I think it more I don't feel Vtes rules are so messy considering game really hasn't have so many major new editions or rule resets. I think there is only one when some actions came not repeatable. Mainly Vtes could just use some clarifications.

VTES is really amazing in the clean rules area when you look at magic next to it. the last straw for me quitting magic was in the form of yet more rules changes and staples not being reprinted to stay type 2 eligible. vtes doesn't rotate, has less wallpaper cards, and our rules don't keep getting revisions, just individual cards.

its still a somewhat imperfect machine, but mtg is still a financial goldmine for wotc/hasbro, doesn't it at least suggest that since vtes was structured better out of the gates that we still have even more potential than mtg?

(ok, maybe thats just optimism and conjecture, but we're less in need of fixing in our rules...)

ReverendRevolver wrote:

its still a somewhat imperfect machine, but mtg is still a financial goldmine for wotc/hasbro, doesn't it at least suggest that since vtes was structured better out of the gates that we still have even more potential than mtg?

Netrunner - which have by far the cleanest ruleset I have seen - may sadly show that the rules and structures are far from being enough.

Part of the magic success repose on some fact :
* they consistently churn out solid and new cards which for 99% are variations from the existant, so the game is never the same yet does not evolve too much.
* you can lay out your strategy while ignoring your opponent, leading to easy entry-level deck.
* the universe appeal to more popular images. Everybody see what is a dragon and a wizard, and FF, Skyrim, and co already make the job of popularizing medieval-fantastic.
* Magic have a lot of fame.
* organizing games are very easy, since it's 1vs1

None of thoses points can easily be put over VtES. It may have some success, but VtES is more a concurrent to Catane and boardgame than magic.