Number of VtES players

White Wolf is European company. Don't dare to mention Atlanta the past.

LivesByProxy wrote:

I'm curious: how it is that VTES has endured in Europe, but here in the American South-East, the original home of White Wolf, the game is virtually dead? Between South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia (combined are approximately the size of Germany) there are maybe 40 players...

My best guess is that lower population density makes is hard to get games in US. maybe people move around more here too so play groups just kind of fall apart.

self wrote:

elotar wrote:

Unfortunately for 99,9% of potential VtES players it's not fine, so they will not continue playing after such experience.

I can't stop thinking about this whole COMBAT DRIVES AWAY PEOPLE thing. The very notion makes almost no sense to me. Every game and system is going to have strategies that are considered abusive and 'not in the spirit of the game.' But those strategies require a person playing the game to utilize those strategies.

Every ccg needs to balance having different things to do with avoiding a negative play experience. Clearly some variance in what constitutes a negative play experience from player to player exists but the aggregation of this info should be very important to designers.

To me I find combat enjoyable because:

1. It's by far the most developed part of the game

2. I like the challenge of trying to win with rush combat

3. Ending combat is for sissies

Things about it I dont like include:

1. Amaranth. If it is being used it is always being abused. You can add mind rape in here too for negative play experience.

2. Agg damage is poorly implemented in the game, easily leads to frustration

3. Having all minions in torpor with no blood.

Pyrocuror wrote:

I feel like I'm talking about the elephant in the room but the decreasing player base from 2010 to nowadays is pretty much tied to the fact that there were no cards printed ... It's not because of combat. I mean the game was almost dead, still got maintained in an artificial respiration state by the core player base, and got reanimated by BCP hard work. .
If anything as a Ancilla player - more than 15 years - in VTES , I'm much more tired to play against (stickmen/grinders) and decks that play a trillion (Eyes of Argus/Sense the Savage way) than anything else.

And that is a the reason.. A lot of people don't like playing a dead game including me. I returned to VTES because it was released again by BC. And a slow growth is related to lack of publishment in the media (I myself got the news because my friends were still active players). Very littly products supporting new players.We have first blood now but it's not enough. This game has huge amount of legal cards and most of them are not available in stores and making pre constructed decks is a good way to start but its a bitch for deck optimisation cost. There should be a discipline based set with more then 2-4 copies of a most used cards to be able to freely adjust.

We have a couple of new players but only because we took on our shoulders buying cards for them online. A Lot of people don't want to deal with ebay and trading.

Don't get me wrong BC is doing great job but there is a lot to do in the future.

Mewcat wrote:

My best guess is that lower population density makes is hard to get games in US. maybe people move around more here too so play groups just kind of fall apart.

Obviously - VtES is very hard on number of players. When you got 10+ then all is fine - you can maintain regular activity, grow a new players, organize events etc. But when the number drops than you are in trouble - 7 or 6 players attending and you got a frustrating evening. After several such evenings you got 5 players. Then you can struggle for a while with 5-4 player games (events are out, obviously, as a meaningful new player recruitment), and then one became unavailable for some reason and play activity stops.