Am I Missing Something?

Hi. I扉e been reading allthe posts on the new CAM set (like all of you) for these past few days ans there is something that keeps nagging me.... Why was it really necessary to change ALL the layout of the cards? The new look is decidedly LESS "gothic-punk" or "gritty" or "vampire-esque" than the old one. No discussion on that. To atract new players WW says, and make it easier for them to recognize symbols and play the game. But that is simply NOT the case I think. First of all, VERY FEW new players, if any, will be playing the game exclusively with new players, so when they play the game they will invariably see the old cards, Jyhad cards, various variations of text on some reprints (with more to come, if all the threads here are to be beleived). In what way does that make it simpler for them? It does not. Imagine you are a new player, just bought a pair of CAM set starters to play with your friend, you play a dozen times or so, think you have the hang of it and go looking for other players to play with, after all, this is a multiplayer game, best appreciated when more than 2 players participate. You find some new players, only to discover that their cards are COMPLETELY different from yours! And suddenly, for every 3 cards they use, 2 of them don愒 do what they say they do in the text. How does that help? Well, it helps if you look WAAAAAAAAAY into the future, after some 4 or more expansions with this new look are released (I might still not be used to it then, having played this game from day 1). But if it is WW愀 intention to release much more expansions, then they did not have to invent this new cript restriction. The Camarilla will be "overpowered" by the huge influx of new vampires? Almost sure. But this will be temporary, as vampires from other clans will definately be released in the future (and not 10 years inthe future, not even 2). So eventually, all clans would be balanced again. The Camarilla was "overpowered" from the day it was released up until WW released Sabbat Wars, and that did not ruin the game. On the contrary, people fought and yelled and WW heard and brought the game back to life. Ah, but now we will have like 50 different princes and justicars! Well, wou already could have that many just by electing them so. There is a VERY good rule in this game that is called CONTESTING. Before no one on the same game could have more than 1 prince of city X or justicar of clan X. Now, no one on the same game can have more than one prince of city X or justicar of clan X. Most cities won愒 even have the same clan on their new princes if WW uses the "canon" princes. Your cript is a fundamental part of your deck, but I think this is giving it too much credit. The way the game stands you can already make decent-to-great cripts of almost every clan. And beleive, me a fantastic cript DOES NOT win you a game. I, and many people I know have both won games with cripts built just for fun (like with one of each vampire of clan X), and lost games with fully cusomised cripts. This all annoys me to no end... it doesn愒 do much more than that because we can always ignore the little "3" and build whatever cript we want (barring tournaments, of course). At least the clan backgrounds could have remained the same, especially after the release of bloodlines, with all those new looks. Now we get a dozen more. :( So, why was this all necessary? Key word necessary. Maybe WW wants the game to be fully thier own, and only by changing the look on the cards can they get some sort of closure on this. It is a strange decision they made. They must have known some people would fly off the rocket in fury and rage. In the end these few poeple will either find new and greener pastures to spend their money on or get used to it. But I have the opinion that if you can avoid conflict of this sort, why not? Keeping the clan backgrounds and card backgrounds, as well as layout would have avoided 90% of this trouble. And in my opinion, kept the game easier for new players to learn. If you say new players are smart enough to get used to the new look along with the old, they probably are. But it would be wrong to assume that they could not get used to the old one. Since the old one contributes more to the "feel" of the game, the old one being kept would entitle only one layout, and the old one would even save WW some money by not having to create a ton more card backgrounds. THese are all reasons why the old layout alone is MUCH simpler to play with. Well, my 2 cents.... (althoug they are currently worth less than half a cent if you put then in dollars! :)

Daniel Figueiredo wrote: > But if it is WW愀 intention to release much more expansions, then > they did not have to invent this new cript restriction. The Camarilla > will be "overpowered" by the huge influx of new vampires? Almost sure. > But this will be temporary, as vampires from other clans will > definately be released in the future (and not 10 years inthe future, > not even 2). So eventually, all clans would be balanced again. No. Then all clans will be overpopulated. The idea is to avoid custom crypts - Custom Crypt: building a crypt first by imagining the vampires you'd create to fill it, and then going to the extensive ranks of actual vampires to find matches. (As opposed to current: builing a crypt by pikcing an idea and then finding vampires that best match that idea). The game was designed with something else in mind. Otherwise the rules would've been written with some sort of point-cost vampire-construction rules to allow players to Frankenstein the vampires that they wanted to be in their crypts. The game as it is was designed to have crypts built using existing vampires (the group of which together failing to represent any significant fraction of the set of all possible vampires). -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

om...@uol.com.br (Daniel Figueiredo) wrote in message news:<b2fbf7ad.02070...@posting.google.com>... > So, why was this all necessary? Key word necessary. Maybe WW wants > the game to be fully thier own, and only by changing the look on the > cards can they get some sort of closure on this. It is a strange > decision they made. They must have known some people would fly off the > rocket in fury and rage. In the end these few poeple will either find > new and greener pastures to spend their money on or get used to it. Yep. None of the visual design changes were necessary. At all. If they wanted to make things easier to read, they could have done so while keeping the basic layout and backgrounds the same. I think you might be on to something with your "closure" theory. In tech circles, this is known as the "not invented here" syndrome. Companies refuse to use popular, established and reliable technology because it was invented by someone else. So they make their own version, but make it different, just to prove it is different, and often make it less functional in the process. I was speculating that the changes were made for business reasons, to force players to stop buying old cards. But Daniel could be right. It could simply boil down to the guys (and gals) at White Wolf wanted to make the game their own. So they threw out the old design for one completely different. If rumors are to be believed, many basic cards are being changed, which will completely redefine game balance. It's possible the reason isn't because the cards were broken at all, but because White Wolf wants to make changes for the sake of changing things, to show the world this is their game now and the old game is gone. Do I think any of this is true? Maybe. The staff at White Wolf has their own reasons for doing this, and I expect we'll never know them. But it's interesting to look at this and think about what might be going on, and why. JSpektr - btw, Brian Glass is the Art Director for VTES, and Aileen Miles did the borders. Just in case anyone wondered.

om...@uol.com.br (Daniel Figueiredo) wrote in message news:<b2fbf7ad.02070...@posting.google.com>... > So, why was this all necessary? Key word necessary. The new design highlights (in garish green) the most important game aspects of the vampire-clan and disciplines. They sacked off aesthetics for playability. If you don't think that's a good tradeoff (I actually don't) that's your opinion but all these psychological and conspiracy theories are just silly. They made a value decision on what's important. If you don't like the aesthetics, stick with your existing decks. If you refuse to play because you think somebody else's deck is unattractive then you'll have to refuse to play but I would think CCGs would be very frustrating for somebody with those preferences. I mean, I know a lot of people don't like Shy, but does anybody actually get up and leave because somebody's playing BL? Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com) "It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson

curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) wrote in message news:<20020708010359...@mb-ca.aol.com>... > om...@uol.com.br (Daniel Figueiredo) wrote in message > news:<b2fbf7ad.02070...@posting.google.com>... > > > So, why was this all necessary? Key word necessary. > > The new design highlights (in garish green) the most important > game aspects of the vampire-clan and disciplines. They sacked > off aesthetics for playability. If you don't think that's a good tradeoff I believe the man said the key word was "necessary." The discipline symbols could have been moved and made larger without any of the other changes. I challenge you to explain how the color green or clan backgrounds that are different from the old sets makes the game any more playable. JSpektr

jsp...@sprynet.com writes: >curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) wrote > >> The new design highlights (in garish green) the most important >> game aspects of the vampire-clan and disciplines. They sacked >> off aesthetics for playability. If you don't think that's a good tradeoff >I believe the man said the key word was "necessary." >The discipline symbols could have been moved and made larger without >any of the other changes. I challenge you to explain how the color >green or clan backgrounds that are different from the old sets makes >the game any more playable. The color green highlights the disciplines, making them much more obvious. You will now be able to easily see what vampires across the table can do without knowing all the vampires - a big benefit for new players. Clan background changes I can't explain, but maybe the art was owned by somebody besides WW and they're not willing to pay anymore. [ quoted text not captured ]

curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) wrote in message news:<20020711123421...@mb-dd.aol.com>... > The color green highlights the disciplines, making them much more > obvious. You will now be able to easily see what vampires across > the table can do without knowing all the vampires - a big benefit for Easily done without the green bar. They still could have been made larger and run down the side without changing any other aspect of the card. They could have even gotten a white glow around each one to make them stand out, and it would have been less jarring (and less ugly, IMHO) than the green bar. Again, the question was how does the green bar, by itself, do anything that couldn't have been done with less alteration of the basic design? It seems like change for change's sake to me. I've met a lot of designers like that, once they are put in charge of a project someone else has already done a good job on, they feel compelled to change it, to leave their mark on it, even if it ultimately makes the design less effective. Not that I'm saying that's what happened, just that it seems like a possibility. > new players. Clan background changes I can't explain, but maybe > the art was owned by somebody besides WW and they're not willing > to pay anymore. If the current posts about reprinting Final Nights are true, then reprinting the backgrounds must not be a problem. Unless they plan on reprinting Final Nights in the new format. JSpektr

First off hello all! This is my second post, but I realized I should have said "hi" the first time. I've played the game since it was Jyhad, but only seriously for about two years now. Although I really hate the new card layout, I am willing to concede that I may eventually get used to the green bar on the library cards, and may even come to almost like it. Maybe. I think the thing that really bothers me is the change to the Vampire cards. It was the vampire cards that got me interested in the game in the first place. They are almost portrait-like in nature, and the new format really messes that up, making them look more like cards (which of course they are, but you get what I mean...). Additionally, using the green bar on both the library cards and the vampire cards makes them appear far too similar. I won't get into the whole "difficult to tell apart" because I've seen how people respond to that ("the have oval pictures instead of square..."). At the very least, the bar used could have been the same color as the amber crypt card backs, which would have made a hell of a lot more sense, and wouldn't have been quite so jarring.

marcus_...@hotmail.com (Geemarcus) wrote in message news:<d020ad95.02071...@posting.google.com>... > Although I really hate the new card layout, I am willing to concede > that I may eventually get used to the green bar on the library cards, > and may even come to almost like it. Maybe. I think the thing that > really bothers me is the change to the Vampire cards. It was the > vampire cards that got me interested in the game in the first place. > They are almost portrait-like in nature, and the new format really > messes that up, making them look more like cards (which of course they > are, but you get what I mean...). Additionally, using the green bar > on both the library cards and the vampire cards makes them appear far > too similar. I won't get into the whole "difficult to tell apart" Good point. That hadn't occurred to me. I suppose it will be more clear whether this is a problem when they're in people's hands. > because I've seen how people respond to that ("the have oval pictures > instead of square..."). At the very least, the bar used could have > been the same color as the amber crypt card backs, which would have > made a hell of a lot more sense, and wouldn't have been quite so > jarring. There are lots of ways it could have been done better, achieving the claimed goals (increased playability) without the drawbacks (jarring change, loss of gothic style). That's what is generating some of the debate, wondering *why* it wasn't done better. JSpektr

om...@uol.com.br (Daniel Figueiredo) wrote in message news:<b2fbf7ad.02070...@posting.google.com>... > Hi. I´ve been reading allthe posts on the new CAM set (like all of > you) for these past few days ans there is something that keeps nagging > me.... > > Why was it really necessary to change ALL the layout of the cards? > The new look is decidedly LESS "gothic-punk" or "gritty" or > "vampire-esque" than the old one. No discussion on that. To atract new > players WW says, and make it easier for them to recognize symbols and > play the game. But that is simply NOT the case I think. First of all, > VERY FEW new players, if any, will be playing the game exclusively > with new players, so when they play the game they will invariably see > the old cards, Jyhad cards, various variations of text on some > reprints (with more to come, if all the threads here are to be > beleived). In what way does that make it simpler for them? It does > not. > This is a very good point, and something that has been bothering me. This set is marketed as a supposed stand-alone and aims at recruiting new players. Well, I don't know too many schmos that are lining up to spend 200+ dollars (convert in your respective currencies) to buy starters, a booster box, and start playing this game. Looking at the ebay transactions, I'd say off-hand that for every new player, an old one sells-off his stuff. So unless they are aiming at that elusive Siberia market, WW has to hope that current players will invest in this expansion. So, as you say, we will not be seeing any time soon tables played with exclusively new design cards...