Attempt to Fix (not ban) Events

Zenedar wrote:

Without Unmasking it's just too easy to steal your allies from you. Around here it's hard to play allies even with Unmasking as people really love to take them from you

I totally agree. Playing allies is hard even with the Unmasking.

I'm against banning The Unmasking simply since I can't see why we would like to reduce the number of viable decks. If anything, I would like more viable decks, and I don't think the solution to that is banning cards, its making new ones. Cards that makes previously less good decks viable is probably exactly what VTES needs to keep people interested in the game and attracting new players. And I know very few people (if anyone) who think ally decks are broken. Don't fix it if it ain't broken.

what I mean is that you need to have really good reasons to ban cards and/or change rules and by it I mean REALLY good reasons. It was like this when they decided to ban Edge Explosion. What I see are decks with events that come into finals, sometimes winning tournaments but it is true for may other cards and they're for sure not dominating world metagame. In my book this means no reason for ban/fix.
As for the restricting fun part, it's always matter of preferences. What is fun for one can be opposite what is fun for others (f.e. not being able to play my game vs. fighting against coming gehenna in hostile environment - it;s just point of view)

The "fun" part of the game is not something freely defined. We can have our own tastes, but the game essentially is about minion interactions. Let's not forget that. Events mostly limit those interactions (your cammies lose titles, you take damage, your vampires burn, your convictions burn, etc., all unblockable), however there are rare cases enriching the game enviroment, for example Unmasking (intercept=interactions), Anthelios (more options for MPA), etc. The problem is not in the design of the events, it is in synergy of imbued AND events, which kill the game entirely.

Nightbringer wrote:

I'm against banning The Unmasking simply since I can't see why we would like to reduce the number of viable decks. If anything, I would like more viable decks, and I don't think the solution to that is banning cards, its making new ones. Cards that makes previously less good decks viable is probably exactly what VTES needs to keep people interested in the game and attracting new players. And I know very few people (if anyone) who think ally decks are broken. Don't fix it if it ain't broken.

Banning cards often makes more *viable* decks, not less. Well, I'd say that's more true for other CCGs where the main reason a card is banned is power concerns and not "this it too annoying for us to enjoy the game" concerns.

Good cards squeeze out not only bad but less good. V:TES has a much larger cardpool for what's viable at the tournament level for a few reasons, with it being multiplayer being at the top. So, yes, banning the best cards from V:TES may not have the same impact that banning the best cards in another CCG would have, which would be opening up the metagame for more lesser tier strategies.

I had plenty of fun playing allies before The Unmasking. I've tried building ally decks recently without The Unmasking and it never makes any sense. It's one card that won't go away while I'm in the game that gives a vast, open-ended advantage where V:TES is mostly a game of small effects. I have far, far less fun playing at tables when The Unmasking is in play. I almost never see Events removed because The Uncoiling kind of sucks at its job and people don't play the Event removers, anyway, because it's really not that fun to load up all of your decks with a bunch of silver bullets.

But I still can't see which decks become more viable by banning The Unmasking (or other events for that matter). If it doesn't make any sense to build an ally deck without The Unmasking as it is now, by banning The Unmasking it will not make any sense at all. Ally decks without The Unmasking does not become more viable by banning The Unmasking.

I totaly agree that if a single card breaks the game and makes a lot of other decks unplayable or the game less fun to play, they should be banned, but I don't feel that way about the events currently in the game.

Nightbringer wrote:

But I still can't see which decks become more viable by banning The Unmasking (or other events for that matter). If it doesn't make any sense to build an ally deck without The Unmasking as it is now, by banning The Unmasking it will not make any sense at all. Ally decks without The Unmasking does not become more viable by banning The Unmasking.

I totaly agree that if a single card breaks the game and makes a lot of other decks unplayable or the game less fun to play, they should be banned, but I don't feel that way about the events currently in the game.

Ally decks don't become more viable with The Unmasking gone. Decks that don't run allies do.

There's a difference between value in absolute terms and in relative terms. Every card (that does something) increases value, but the "size of the pie" doesn't matter. What matters is how a card affects the "portion of the pie" that a deck can claim. The pie always, always gets bigger as cards are introduced. I just don't like the slice size that ally decks have.

I got shutdown in the endgame of a recent tournament because I couldn't get past Underbridge Strays and The Unmasking with my casual stealth. I'm not saying that's evidence of a problem, but it points to how by making allies stronger, everything else gets weaker in relative terms. There is no "Put this card in play, only a few cards can remove this and only like one card can cancel this as played. Give all Anarchs [Primogen, 6-caps, vampires with fangs in the art, or whatever] +1 Intercept." card. Why allies get such a card escapes me, as it was entirely possible to play with the allies I commonly see today before The Unmasking came around. There were Shamblers, War Ghouls, Nephandi, even some folks played Bane Mummies back when there was such a things as Bane/Mummies before The Unmasking showed up, and there would be ally decks if The Unmasking was gone. To Darby's point, the more powerful something is, the more counters people play for it, so the commonality of ally steal (or nuke) correlates to how powerful allies are.

Btw, that Primogen card should totally be made, only not +1 Intercept because (only somewhat on topic) +1 Intercept is the most game altering of the +1's that the game uses (+1 Stealth is situationally better but less game altering).

The Masking
Event
All Primogen get +1 vote, +1 strength, +1 bleed, and +1 awesome.
"I don't know. We still might suck." - Elisabetta Romano