black hand preconstructed decks

I am once again not impressed with the toreador precon deck. It seemed to be the weakest deck for one simple reason - it had no presses or maneuvers. What in the hell caused that to happen. The simple addition of 4 or 5 flashes and the deck would have been pretty good. As it was, the nosferatu deck I played was able to block and go to long consistently.

> I am once again not impressed with the toreador precon deck. implying that once before you were unimpressed with the !Tor deck?

"Metropolis" <do...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:%Xaub.5271$H91.1...@news.itd.umich.edu... > > I am once again not impressed with the toreador precon deck. > > implying that once before you were unimpressed with the !Tor deck? > > > Aside from the indicated duel implication, I believe after examining the metagame of the !Tor deck in the tournament, our group agreed with the original poster. The deck's construction and particular choice of cards was ineffective. Initial examination indicated a rather large crypt. This of course was probably to be intended to be modified in the draft meaning that you had to have luck on your side to get a decent vamp of relatively low capacity to offset the large crypt required to vote. The bloated number of vote cards in the deck indicated that the designer intended the deck to be capable of passing it's votes. This did not seem the case with the number of cheap vote available to all the pre release decks. The certain lack of stealth was also incapacitating. As far as the combat goes, it is true that when the deck did hit with a weapon, it hurt. If you didn't have a weapon or a manouver, good luck. If one decided to change the strategy and forego the vote angle, your choice of bleed cards was very small (though Propaganda proved excellent that day). In the end, the players of the deck tended to be the most frustrated as the offence of the deck was lacking and the combat was easily countered. In it's credit, that deck had the most effective defence. We gave it a very high speedbump rating with all the intercept, counter and misdirection available to it. Mark Allen Prince of Ottawa

kit3...@yahoo.com (Jeff Haar) wrote in message news:<6933e80c.0311...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] Yeah. I played a !Tremere deck and was even able to do the much maligned Theft-Press-Walk -combo agaist !Toreador. I assumed that they DO have some Flashes/Pursuits in addition to dodges and was afraid of them, but as it was, a single maneuver was enough to keep them at bay. -Antero

I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make the starters fair. Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers questions like these.

as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) wrote in message news:<5a3b0aea.03111...@posting.google.com>... > I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make the > starters fair. Do you need to rest that paintbrush on your shoulder when you paint in such broad strokes? ;-) WW starters are, on the whole, fair. There is always a weakest selection from each expansion, though. !Tor happen to be it for BH. At least the !Nos got a better shake than the Nos did in Cam Ed. Also, from what I've seen, the !Tor deck is vastly better than SW's !Ven. > Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor > deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty > Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers > questions like these. Heh, and you wonder why, with the happy tone you set in asking the question... (would you be inclined to answer a question of _your_ work that goes "Hey, Henrick, why are _you_ so shitty at what you do?" I'd expect your response would be the same as WW's) WW realizes that its impossible to make everyone happy, and answering baited questions such as these never satisfies anybody. DaveZ Atom Weaver

On 18 Nov 2003 10:40:14 -0800, guenh...@mindspring.com (atomweaver) scrawled: >as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) wrote in message news:<5a3b0aea.03111...@posting.google.com>... [snip] >> Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor >> deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty >> Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers >> questions like these. > > Heh, and you wonder why, with the happy tone you set in asking the >question... (would you be inclined to answer a question of _your_ >work that goes "Hey, Henrick, why are _you_ so shitty at what you do?" > I'd expect your response would be the same as WW's) WW realizes that >its impossible to make everyone happy, and answering baited questions >such as these never satisfies anybody. Not to mention subjectiveness. Not everyone thinks the !Tor deck sucked compared to the rest. Personally, i thought it was just different. If people played it badly and didn't stack up on the titles to make sure they could pass Cons Boon, or threw out the cons boon assuming they'd have 'better' pool gain, it's hardly WW's fault. If you gave them maneuvers and presses and blood dolls, they'd have wiped the floor. One prerelease I was at was won by ToreadorA, with two of them starting in the final round. (Two TorA, one MalkA, one TremA, one NosA). salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm

salem expounded: > Personally, i thought it was just different. If people played it badly > and didn't stack up on the titles to make sure they could pass Cons > Boon, or threw out the cons boon assuming they'd have 'better' pool > gain, it's hardly WW's fault. The crypt is way too big and 2 Zillah's Valley just doesn't cut it. I played the !Nos deck today, straight out of the box, against the Tre and Malk decks. I don't see why it did so badly in the Watford pre- release. Having played all but the Malk one now, the Tor is definitely the weakest: mostly due to the crypt size. Those who won appear to have been lucky with the crypt (often getting some small vamps to swap in before play or just being lucky on the draw). It also lacks forward motion -you could try rushing with the templars but then you are the only one without a maneuver and no way to press or get back close and you leave yourself with no defence to boot. WRT CBs: you have to draw them before you can play them and even then your two minons aren't going to yield you a lot. IME there was enough gain and intercept to keep your head above water but not enough to go forward.

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:32:13 +1100, salem <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote: >On 18 Nov 2003 10:40:14 -0800, guenh...@mindspring.com (atomweaver) >scrawled: > >>as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) wrote in message news:<5a3b0aea.03111...@posting.google.com>... >[snip] >>> Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor >>> deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty >>> Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers >>> questions like these. >> >> Heh, and you wonder why, with the happy tone you set in asking the >>question... (would you be inclined to answer a question of _your_ >>work that goes "Hey, Henrick, why are _you_ so shitty at what you do?" >> I'd expect your response would be the same as WW's) WW realizes that >>its impossible to make everyone happy, and answering baited questions >>such as these never satisfies anybody. > >Not to mention subjectiveness. Not everyone thinks the !Tor deck >sucked compared to the rest. > >Personally, i thought it was just different. If people played it badly >and didn't stack up on the titles to make sure they could pass Cons >Boon, or threw out the cons boon assuming they'd have 'better' pool >gain, it's hardly WW's fault. Surely a one stealth action to gain pool in an environment now more full of intercept (Legwork, Watch Commander, Ministry) against four other starter decks which all had intercept in them, is different to the playing of a master card in an environment where there was no Sudden Reversals. I'm just saying that the !Tor pool gain was much less of a no brainer than the pool gain in other decks where Blood Doll, Hunting Ground could set a person up. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make the > > starters fair. > > Do you need to rest that paintbrush on your shoulder when you paint in > such broad strokes? ;-) > WW starters are, on the whole, fair. There is always a weakest > selection from each expansion, though. !Tor happen to be it for BH. > At least the !Nos got a better shake than the Nos did in Cam Ed. > Also, from what I've seen, the !Tor deck is vastly better than SW's > !Ven. I use the language I use because 1.) I´m upset because it´s so entirely unexplainable why one starter should be worse (or harder to play good) than the others. (And yes, I know it´s sad to get upset over something like this. I´m pathetic and so on blablabla...) 2.) I know it doesn´t matter what language I use, because WW doesn´t bother to answer anyway. I know that from experience. > > Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor > > deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty > > Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers > > questions like these. > > Heh, and you wonder why, with the happy tone you set in asking the > question... (would you be inclined to answer a question of _your_ > work that goes "Hey, Henrick, why are _you_ so shitty at what you do?" > I'd expect your response would be the same as WW's) WW realizes that > its impossible to make everyone happy, and answering baited questions > such as these never satisfies anybody. Yes, as a matter of fact, I would feel inclined to answer questions from customers if I worked at WW. Isn´t that the way _all_ normal companies work? Also, I did not write anything like "why are you so shitty at what you do?" WW is doing a VERY good work with VtES as a whole, and BH is a good set... But I just don´t like the unfair, and unexplained, starters. And by the way, my name is Henrik. But it´s OK to call me Henrick if you like.

>I use the language I use because >1.) I惴 upset because it愀 so entirely unexplainable why one starter >should be worse (or harder to play good) than the others. (And yes, I >know it愀 sad to get upset over something like this. I惴 pathetic and >so on blablabla...) I can't get too excited by how the precons play given how rarely anyone plays with them. What I find harder to understand are the inconsistencies in value. If the goal is to sell precons, which is suggested with such as the Ventrue precon and the various reprinted "ooh" rares, then one would think there would be more good stuff in certain precons. If the goal is to have a starting point for people who need one but not to sell the precons (quite reasonable as some companies have lost money on every precon they sold, writing it off as a marketing expense), then it's not clear why the precons bother having "ooh" rares.

On 20 Nov 2003 01:17:28 GMT, cur...@aol.commetal (Curevei) scrawled: [ quoted text not captured ] well, if they lose money on every starter they sell, imagine how much money they lose on every starter they print but don't sell. they're probably trying for as good a compromise on 'starting play' (hence the term Starter Deck) and 'give the players the 'ooh' cards' as they can. anyway, if someone else is able to design perfectly balanced against each other starters that take into account some amount of boosters and/or drafting and varying suitablility of play style to particular players, then i am sure WW would be willing to listen to their advice when designing the next set of precons. [ quoted text not captured ]

salem expounded: > anyway, if someone else is able to design perfectly balanced against > each other starters that take into account some amount of boosters > and/or drafting and varying suitablility of play style to particular > players, then i am sure WW would be willing to listen to their advice > when designing the next set of precons. Do the precons get playtested together? I'm pretty sure the problems would show up clearly in even 2 or 3 games and fixing the Tor crypt would have done a lot. The 'ooh rares' are also easily spotted.

as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) wrote in message news:<5a3b0aea.03111...@posting.google.com>... > > > I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make the > > > starters fair. > > > > Do you need to rest that paintbrush on your shoulder when you paint in > > such broad strokes? ;-) > > WW starters are, on the whole, fair. There is always a weakest > > selection from each expansion, though. !Tor happen to be it for BH. > > At least the !Nos got a better shake than the Nos did in Cam Ed. > > Also, from what I've seen, the !Tor deck is vastly better than SW's > > !Ven. > > I use the language I use because > 1.) I´m upset because it´s so entirely unexplainable why one starter > should be worse (or harder to play good) than the others. (And yes, I > know it´s sad to get upset over something like this. I´m pathetic and > so on blablabla...) I think its more unexplainable to expect four (or three, or six) starters to be perfectly balanced in play against one another (and against previous starters). I also think its unexplainable to say that all the starters are unfair if one of the starters happens to be weaker than the others. To each his own, I suppose... > 2.) I know it doesn´t matter what language I use, because WW doesn´t > bother to answer anyway. I know that from experience. > Yes, from experience, I'd agree. Companies (and people. The smart ones, anyways) don't answer baited questions. > > > Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor > > > deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty > > > Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers > > > questions like these. > > > > Heh, and you wonder why, with the happy tone you set in asking the > > question... (would you be inclined to answer a question of _your_ > > work that goes "Hey, Henrick, why are _you_ so shitty at what you do?" > > I'd expect your response would be the same as WW's) WW realizes that > > its impossible to make everyone happy, and answering baited questions > > such as these never satisfies anybody. > > Yes, as a matter of fact, I would feel inclined to answer questions > from customers if I worked at WW. Isn´t that the way _all_ normal > companies work? Smart companies (like White Wolf) recognize a losing fight when they see it, and choose not to watse manpower for nothing. Giving Henrik an answer, or changing to accomodate him would just leave some other player, with a different perspective on the problem, dissatisfied with the new solution. The net gain for the company is negative, since they put effort and manpower into solving Henrik's issue, but lost the support of another player as a consequence. You can't please all of the peope all of the time. I'm sorry it had to be Henrik that was dissatisfied this particular time, but it was bound to be somebody... > Also, I did not write anything like "why are you so > shitty at what you do?" WW is doing a VERY good work with VtES as a > whole, and BH is a good set... But I just don´t like the unfair, and > unexplained, starters. Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. It'd be great fun... > And by the way, my name is Henrik. But it´s OK > to call me Henrick if you like. Right. Sorry for the inadvertent Americkanization ;-) DaveZ Atom Weaver

"Timlagor" <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message news:MPG.1a264a16e...@news.freeserve.com... [ quoted text not captured ] They must, but I don't know by who. Not by my Black Hand playtest group, so certainly not by *all* the playtest groups. Possibly by some of them. Josh not judging, just saying

> > I use the language I use because > > 1.) I´m upset because it´s so entirely unexplainable why one starter > > should be worse (or harder to play good) than the others. (And yes, I > > know it´s sad to get upset over something like this. I´m pathetic and > > so on blablabla...) > > I think its more unexplainable to expect four (or three, or six) > starters to be perfectly balanced in play against one another (and > against previous starters). I also think its unexplainable to say > that all the starters are unfair if one of the starters happens to be > weaker than the others. To each his own, I suppose... Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more balanced, why not do it? > > 2.) I know it doesn´t matter what language I use, because WW doesn´t > > bother to answer anyway. I know that from experience. > > Yes, from experience, I'd agree. Companies (and people. The smart > ones, anyways) don't answer baited questions. Why not? Are you implying that all companies that listens to their customers, and all companies that have a customer service department, are not smart? I don´t think a company can lose anything to answer a question from a customer. But I guess I´m not that smart then? > > Yes, as a matter of fact, I would feel inclined to answer questions > > from customers if I worked at WW. Isn´t that the way _all_ normal > > companies work? > > Smart companies (like White Wolf) recognize a losing fight when they > see it, and choose not to watse manpower for nothing. Giving Henrik > an answer, or changing to accomodate him would just leave some other > player, with a different perspective on the problem, dissatisfied with > the new solution. The net gain for the company is negative, since > they put effort and manpower into solving Henrik's issue, but lost the > support of another player as a consequence. You can't please all of > the peope all of the time. I'm sorry it had to be Henrik that was > dissatisfied this particular time, but it was bound to be somebody... Question: Why is it a losing fight to explain why the starters are constructed as they are? And, again, I do not agree that such a thing is a waste of manpower. WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like this? And why would some other player be dissatisfied with me getting a question answered? Or why would any other player be dissatisfied with all the starters getting 2 Blood Dolls each and manuevers/presses in the deck that desperately needs it? (and then the decks balanced after that?) I don´t get your logic. (And one other thing - I do understand that the Toreador is playtested by WW against the other decks, and that it certainly CAN win games, even tournaments maybe, but there are many other factors that matter for that to happen. Like who is playing it and what other players that attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). > Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority > fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The > productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft > with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. > It'd be great fun... Again, I don´t get your logic - If you have the possibility to balance _all_ the starters better, why not do so? Why leave one deck less playable than the others? Also, I agree with Curevei that more "ooooh"-cards could be added for WW to sell more staters. But on the other hand I like that WW don´t go all "Decipher-y" and freak out making foils and xtra-rare cards just to sell more. Yours, Henrik

On 20 Nov 2003 14:43:07 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) scrawled: >> Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority >> fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The >> productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft >> with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. >> It'd be great fun... > >Again, I don´t get your logic - If you have the possibility to balance >_all_ the starters better, why not do so? Why leave one deck less >playable than the others? where does this possibility come from? presumably they were as balanced as they thought they could be prior to printing, in the opinions and experience of whoever played them. do you want them to go back and re-playtest them with the prerelease results in mind and see if they could change the contents of the starters to make them even more balanced? sounds like an awful lot of work to me. Also, and now I am just chucking in an idea here: the cards you seem to think the tordeador deck _needs_, Blood Dolls, maneuvers and presses. Now, perhaps they weren't included because not everyone thinks pool gain is only doable with Blood Dolls, and some players might not want them (do a google search for 'weak blood doll test'), and maybe they didn't want to put Flash, etc., in yet another precon. But if players did want maneuvers/presses or Blood Dolls there are a heap of other starters for that. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <5a3b0aea.0311...@posting.google.com>, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) mumbled something about: >> I think its more unexplainable to expect four (or three, or six) >> starters to be perfectly balanced in play against one another (and >> against previous starters). I also think its unexplainable to say >> that all the starters are unfair if one of the starters happens to be >> weaker than the others. To each his own, I suppose... > >Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more >balanced, why not do it? How do you know the playtesters didn't determine that the starters were, in fact, balanced? How do the playtesters compare to actual players? Are the playtesters likely to be better or worse? Will this have an effect on the results of the testing? Will this have an effect on what happens when a better or worse player uses the starter? Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the playtesters? If so, why? You know nothing about them -- how can you make such a conclusion? Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they balanced for a different environment entirely? Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you can correctly assess the situation, and from this, have an informed opinion to base statements like yours on? >> Yes, from experience, I'd agree. Companies (and people. The smart >> ones, anyways) don't answer baited questions. > >Why not? Are you implying that all companies that listens to their >customers, and all companies that have a customer service department, >are not smart? I don愒 think a company can lose anything to answer a >question from a customer. But I guess I惴 not that smart then? That is correct. You are NOT aware of the downside of attempting to answer every single question. The downside in this case is that nobody would be satisfied with the answer to the question itself; instead, it would simply provoke more questions, whether or not you yourself were satisfied with the original answer. Every last one of those questioners think they can do better than WW; every last one of you is wrong, or you would be running a game company yourself. Yes, that is a fact. If you make a foolish attempt to answer every single question, then you rapidly become a company that answers questions instead of a company that gets things done -- or worse, you become a company that makes thousands of miniscule changes which ruin the product entirely. Instead, you provide a product. You realize that the product will not satisfy everyone. You make every reasonable effort to make the product a Good Thing for the majority of players; and then you leave it alone, and never, EVER answer questions about design decisions, because it's just a waste of time. Successful companies remember that you cannot make everyone happy. >> Smart companies (like White Wolf) recognize a losing fight when they >> see it, and choose not to watse manpower for nothing. Giving Henrik >> an answer, or changing to accomodate him would just leave some other >> player, with a different perspective on the problem, dissatisfied with >> the new solution. The net gain for the company is negative, since >> they put effort and manpower into solving Henrik's issue, but lost the >> support of another player as a consequence. You can't please all of >> the peope all of the time. I'm sorry it had to be Henrik that was >> dissatisfied this particular time, but it was bound to be somebody... > >Question: Why is it a losing fight to explain why the starters are >constructed as they are? See above. >And, again, I do not agree that such a thing is a waste of manpower. You don't have to agree for it to still be a waste. >WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on >various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like >this? Because people like you don't listen and don't think. >attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). But why should you get to know that information? You'll just use it to complain more if you don't like it... and if you do like it, someone else who doesn't will just use it to complain. Do you really think everyone agrees with your viewpoint? If you do, you're wrong. That simple. -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

Derek Ray expounded: > Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be > balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which > will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they > balanced for a different environment entirely? I want them to be ballanced in two ways: 1) In a limitted environment (against other Starters) -it may only happen once or twice but it matters when it does. 2) In terms of valuable ('ooh') cards. > Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you Look at the questions. Then you have to wait and see if you get the answers.

salem expounded: > Also, and now I am just chucking in an idea here: the cards you seem > to think the tordeador deck _needs_, Blood Dolls, maneuvers and > presses. Now, perhaps they weren't included because not everyone > thinks pool gain is only doable with Blood Dolls, and some players > might not want them (do a google search for 'weak blood doll test'), > and maybe they didn't want to put Flash, etc., in yet another precon. > But if players did want maneuvers/presses or Blood Dolls there are a > heap of other starters for that. I don't think so. Did you know that there is no way of getting Blood Dolls outside of Starters? (I find this annoying as getting a Starter always makes me want to build a new deck -though getting that many cards in boosters doesn't..) Even the people who don't agree with the 'blood doll hypothesis' agree that they are very powerful and like them in a lot of their decks. I think they left the Blood Dolls out because they wanted to prove that decks without them are viable. I think that they were also out to prove that close range weapons were viable. Obviuosly I don't know. Some Bum's Rushes would have been great replacements for Templars if they were really avers to Flash/Pursuit/...

Henrik Klippstr?m wrote: > WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > this? I have. For those of you who missed it: One of the goals in designing the precons is that they be balanced. As if it needed repeating. -- 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/

Dear Derek First of all - this is just my thoughts. It is not a matter of me being more right than you or anyone else. To call people less smart than others just because they have another point of view is called FLAME or INSULT, and there is a silent agreement to not do that here. I hope you can agree with this. > >Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more > >balanced, why not do it? > > How do you know the playtesters didn't determine that the starters were, > in fact, balanced? Of course I understand the starters are playtested. Probably by better players than me and people who are better at math and so on. That was not the question - the question was, to put it simply, why the !Tor starter has no Blood Doll (instead Con. Boon even though it has kinda hard to get those through) and no manuvears nor presses, even though it desperately need some to stand a fight with the others (yes, even to avoid the Comas in the !Malk deck). > How do the playtesters compare to actual players? Are the playtesters > likely to be better or worse? Will this have an effect on the results > of the testing? Will this have an effect on what happens when a better > or worse player uses the starter? > Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the playtesters? > If so, why? You know nothing about them -- how can you make such a > conclusion? No, see above. I do not consider myself better, I just think in another way and ask questions. Sorry if that愀 upsetting you. > Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be > balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which > will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they > balanced for a different environment entirely? I guess the Starter decks are constructed for 1.) Sealed deck play. This should be the prime goal. For this the starters should be as balanced as possible against eachother. Or am I wrong? 2.) Starters for new players. For this they should include a good deck, playable against other starters or, with a few boosters and some trade, other beginner decks. Am I wrong? 3.) More experienced players. For this they should include cards that a more experienced player would like - and believe me, the Black Hand starters DO! (Nice out-of-print vampires). Am I wrong? 4.) Selling cards = Making WW money. For WW to get richer and larger and better as a company. For this, include some "chase-cards" to attact even the most experienced/rich players (starter-only vamps, Disarm and so on) Am I wrong? > Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you > can correctly assess the situation, and from this, have an informed > opinion to base statements like yours on? Of course I don愒 know if I correctly assess the situation. How could I? Do you know if you do? I am allowed to have an opinion, and so do you. I am allowed to ask WW questions, and they are of course allowed to refuse to answer them. Then I am allowed to criticize that choice, and ask again, this time WHY they make that choice. > The downside in this case is that nobody would be satisfied with the > answer to the question itself; instead, it would simply provoke more > questions, whether or not you yourself were satisfied with the original > answer. How can you say that "nobody would be satisfied with the answer"? People ask companies questions all the time and get satisfied with the answers. How often does is happen that _another_ customer gets dissatiesfied with one customer getting his question answered? > Every last one of those questioners think they can do better > than WW; every last one of you is wrong, or you would be running a game > company yourself. Yes, that is a fact. No, that is not a fact, it is just you愉e opinion. And I do most certainly not agree. Think about that assumption again - Why would I run a game company just because I sometimes (lets say, one in twenty times) think I could run a game company better than WW? And even if I ALWAYS think I could run a company better than WW (which I do not), it is many many many other factors that make me not even try to start a game company (= the market is flooded, I have not the starting money and so on). Logical or? > If you make a foolish attempt to answer every single question, then you > rapidly become a company that answers questions instead of a company > that gets things done I don愒 agree. In discussing things like this with players/customers, a company could learn much more (= "get things done") than in answering questions than most literate people could find in the rulebook. Even though that is also a GREAT customer service - keep up the good work LSJ! > -- or worse, you become a company that makes > thousands of miniscule changes which ruin the product entirely. No. A good game developer could see the difference between stuff like "Print more vamps with the Ian Forestal-ability" and stuff like "How did you motivate this, in my opinion, odd selection of cards in the !Tor starter?". I assume WW has made a choice in this case, and in the case with the changed card backgrounds for CE. And I think it愀 a wrong choice. > Instead, you provide a product. You realize that the product will not > satisfy everyone. You make every reasonable effort to make the product > a Good Thing for the majority of players; and then you leave it alone, > and never, EVER answer questions about design decisions, because it's > just a waste of time. > Successful companies remember that you cannot make everyone happy. While I cannot talk for every other player, I can talk for me and many of the players in my game enviroment. NONE of these players understand why the !Tor starter is composed as it is. I扉e also seen lots of other people ask the same question (read the rest of this thread if you don愒 believe me). And it was kinda the same thing with the CE Nosferatu starter. > >And, again, I do not agree that such a thing is a waste of manpower. > > You don't have to agree for it to still be a waste. I don愒 even bother to comment on that. > >WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > >various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > >this? > > Because people like you don't listen and don't think. Incorrect. I do listen and I do think, and I also have the ability to understand that other people do and have own opinions. That is why I try not to insult them by telling them that they don愒 think. > >attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). > > But why should you get to know that information? You'll just use it to > complain more if you don't like it... and if you do like it, someone > else who doesn't will just use it to complain. If I had the answer I would understand. I like to understand. It helps me through everyday life and sometimes I think its the cheer meaning of life - to understand. Call me curious if you like. Also, the meaning with asking questions like I do on this newsgroup is OF COURSE to try to make WW to listen, and to not make these (what I call, _in my own humble opinion_) mistakes next time they design starters. VtES is one very funny game and one of my favorite hobbies. If I think that I can make it even better, be sure, I will try. > Do you really think everyone agrees with your viewpoint? If you do, > you're wrong. That simple. Have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint? No. I can only talk for myself, and sometimes I can refer to people I know with the same opinion, and people on this newsgroup. Again, I ask you Derek, have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint?

On 21 Nov 2003 04:15:44 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) scrawled: >Dear Derek > >First of all - this is just my thoughts. It is not a matter of me >being more right than you or anyone else. To call people less smart >than others just because they have another point of view is called >FLAME or INSULT, and there is a silent agreement to not do that here. >I hope you can agree with this. I don't tbink people have any such silent agreement. There will be flames, there will be trolls, there will be insults. I don't expect that to change on _any_ public forum any time soon. It's not pretty, but it's how it is. Better get used to it. Especially from Derek, as he is quite enthusiastic about his opinions. :) The trick is to come away from all of it having learned something, and to try not to get the urge to climb a clock tower. [ quoted text not captured ]

I wrote: > >Again, I don´t get your logic - If you have the possibility to balance > >_all_ the starters better, why not do so? Why leave one deck less > >playable than the others? Salem wrote: > where does this possibility come from? presumably they were as > balanced as they thought they could be prior to printing, in the > opinions and experience of whoever played them. do you want them to go > back and re-playtest them with the prerelease results in mind and see > if they could change the contents of the starters to make them even > more balanced? sounds like an awful lot of work to me. No, of course I do not want them to go back reprinting the starters. I would like them to explain to me why they do as they do (in spite of the things I, and others, mentioned on this thread) and listen and MAYBE, just maybe, if they deem it appropriate, learn for next time they make starters. Is this that very foolish of me? > Also, and now I am just chucking in an idea here: the cards you seem > to think the tordeador deck _needs_, Blood Dolls, maneuvers and > presses. Now, perhaps they weren't included because not everyone > thinks pool gain is only doable with Blood Dolls, and some players > might not want them (do a google search for 'weak blood doll test'), > and maybe they didn't want to put Flash, etc., in yet another precon. > But if players did want maneuvers/presses or Blood Dolls there are a > heap of other starters for that. As for the cheer access to Dolls and Flashes, I think (this is an assumption made on observations in mine and my friends card collections) most players has enough of those cards. And nobody of them would be any happier for getting a Con. Boon than a Doll or 5 Templar instead of 5 Flashes in their starter. I think mainly of the sealed deck enviroment play when I criticize the starters.

<snip> I just don´t like the unfair, and > > unexplained, starters. > > Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority > fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The > productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft > with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. > It'd be great fun... Great idea! Though i'm not sure that the the above starters are really that weak. When Anarchs came out, Rob played with the Anarch Barons starter and beat me [Gangrel] and Michael [Anarch Gangs] in a draft game; and Jon Cooper won a SW draft tourney with the !Ventrue. Maybe this is relevant to a point made by Derek in another post on this thread. <snip>

as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) wrote in message news:<5a3b0aea.0311...@posting.google.com>... > > > I use the language I use because > > > 1.) I´m upset because it´s so entirely unexplainable why one starter > > > should be worse (or harder to play good) than the others. (And yes, I > > > know it´s sad to get upset over something like this. I´m pathetic and > > > so on blablabla...) > > > > I think its more unexplainable to expect four (or three, or six) > > starters to be perfectly balanced in play against one another (and > > against previous starters). I also think its unexplainable to say > > that all the starters are unfair if one of the starters happens to be > > weaker than the others. To each his own, I suppose... > > Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more > balanced, why not do it? > This isn't related to the original topic you posed. The simple answer is workload. After some level of playtesting, there is a diminsihing return on "tweaking" decks to balance against one another, because it is a near-total unknown as to the exact environment that the deck will be played in. Possibilities include: 1) Four player, one of each BH clan, with no deck mods 2) Five player, mixed decks from BH and other expansions, no deck mods 3) #1, plus 3 booster draft 4) #2, plus 3 booster draft 5) #1, plus 3 booster sealed 6) #2, plus 3 booster sealed 7) Sealed two-starter decks (same clan) 8) Sealed two starter decks (different clan) 9) Standard Pre-Release Format 10) Storyline Tournament with a Limited (Draft) format 11) ... This list is theoretically infinite. In which environment do you balance the decks _more_? The answer is likely different for each one. > > > 2.) I know it doesn´t matter what language I use, because WW doesn´t > > > bother to answer anyway. I know that from experience. > > > > Yes, from experience, I'd agree. Companies (and people. The smart > > ones, anyways) don't answer baited questions. > > Why not? Are you implying that all companies that listens to their > customers, and all companies that have a customer service department, > are not smart? I don´t think a company can lose anything to answer a > question from a customer. But I guess I´m not that smart then? > I cast no aspersions on your intelligence, but I think we have a slang language barrier here. Can someone please provide an understandable translation of 'baited' for Henrik? Let me give you an example of baited questioning. When I was last in Germany, CNN International had a wonderful British AM anchorman interviewing a representative of P & O Cruise Lines. One of P&O's ships had recently suffered an outbreak of that nasty stomach virus that has hit a number of cruise lines. Forty-some people were affected. The rest (over 1100 passengers, IIRC) hardly knew about it, until the ship turned around early to return to port, and contain the problem. The 'interview' went something like this; Anchor: How exactly is it that a company like P&O can think to continue sentting sail with this obvious black mark on their company? Representative: We consider one contained outbreak to be a serious issue, but one that won't keep us from providing our fine service to the cruise industry. Anchor: When will you be reimbursing all of the cruise-goers from this nightmare vacation gone awry for thier ruined holiday? Rep: We will be dealing with customer complainsts on a case-by-case basis, and responding fairly and appropriately. Anchor: But all of those people paid a large sum for a cruise that put their health in serious jeopardy, and then had it cut short by and early return... I just want to know when it is that they will be getting their money back? Rep: We will be dealing with customer complainsts on a case-by-case basis, and responding fairly and appropriately. Yes, some questions are bad for a company to answer. In each case, the Anchor's questions beg a greater level or atrocity than was really present, and attempted to catch (hence, bait) the representative into commiting his company to a course of action that would exceed what is appropriate. In this instance, the representative was forced by circumstance to respond to such questions, and did so by wisely not answering them directly. Answering the above directly would be suicidal, and the Anchor knows it. So does the Rep. Yes, your original questions were similar to this scenario... From your original post: "I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make the starters fair. Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers questions like these." You've now toned down to a meek 'I just wanted to know why it was made the way it was'. You original post in no way impled that you would be reasonable in listening to the response, even if one were given. Even if you were reasoned in your view of the response, some other nut wouldn't be. So yes, it is Foolish for Companies to answer baited questions... > > > Yes, as a matter of fact, I would feel inclined to answer questions > > > from customers if I worked at WW. Isn´t that the way _all_ normal > > > companies work? > > > > Smart companies (like White Wolf) recognize a losing fight when they > > see it, and choose not to watse manpower for nothing. Giving Henrik > > an answer, or changing to accomodate him would just leave some other > > player, with a different perspective on the problem, dissatisfied with > > the new solution. The net gain for the company is negative, since > > they put effort and manpower into solving Henrik's issue, but lost the > > support of another player as a consequence. You can't please all of > > the peope all of the time. I'm sorry it had to be Henrik that was > > dissatisfied this particular time, but it was bound to be somebody... > > Question: Why is it a losing fight to explain why the starters are > constructed as they are? See Derek Ray's excellent response. I suspect you never meant for the question to be answered directly when you asked it orignally. It was a baited question, meant to express your frustration that the !Tor deck ended up a little weaker than the rest. If you did really want a response to specifics, you'd have phrased the question differently, to show that you might be reasonable in considering the response. Or, you might have asked LSJ in a private email... > And, again, I do not agree that such a thing is a waste of manpower. > WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > this? Being the Net Rep means that he has to answer rules questions, yes. It doesn't mean he (or any other WW representative) needs to open the doors wide to every White Wolf policy and design decision... > And why would some other player be dissatisfied with me getting a > question answered? If they don't like the answer, they'll be asking other questions of their own. I'd guess about thirty people won't like the answer to your one question on design, and will bury the rep in design-related dialogue with no satisfactory resolution, and ultimately no productive results. > Or why would any other player be dissatisfied with > all the starters getting 2 Blood Dolls each and manuevers/presses in > the deck that desperately needs it? (and then the decks balanced after > that?) I don´t get your logic. The logic is that there will _always_ be a dissatisfied individual. _Always_. This is because not everyone will agree on the right "fix" for the decks. Whats more, a fix to make the !Tor deck stronger will likely leave some other deck (and its associated fans) as the weakest deck. All this aside, if a company opens the doors of its design decisions to the average consumer, then the company soon becomes run by thousands, and that business model is doomed to failure. > (And one other thing - I do understand that the Toreador is playtested > by WW against the other decks, and that it certainly CAN win games, > even tournaments maybe, but there are many other factors that matter > for that to happen. Like who is playing it and what other players that > attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). > Maybe by now, you do. In the start, though, you were just venting steam... > > Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority > > fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The > > productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft > > with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. > > It'd be great fun... > > Again, I don´t get your logic - If you have the possibility to balance > _all_ the starters better, why not do so? Why leave one deck less > playable than the others? > Why not do so? Because no matter how much better you balance the decks, there will always be a deck that is weakest (in certain environments). The value of additional work diminishes exponentially, so one has to draw a line somewhere as to how much work is done balancing decks. The actual playability differences between all of the starters (with the possible exception of the !Venture) is small. Much smaller than this thread implies. Whats more, none of this takes into account the format of the game, either. Given the right circumstance (say, two-deck sealed with different clans), I'd be picking up the !Tor as my main deck. DaveZ Atom Weaver

Henrik Klippstr?m expounded: > As for the cheer access to Dolls and Flashes, I think (this is an > assumption made on observations in mine and my friends card > collections) most players has enough of those cards. And nobody of > them would be any happier for getting a Con. Boon than a Doll or 5 > Templar instead of 5 Flashes in their starter. I think mainly of the > sealed deck enviroment play when I criticize the starters. People who have not been playing since BTES/SAbbat never got a chance to get Blood Dolls in boosters and many of use don' have enough.

legb...@mailandnews.com (legbiter) wrote in message news:<22fea992.03112...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] I agree. I quoted to imply my own reluctance to label them as such. Amy made the FN pre-release finals with the Assamite starter (based on total VP tally, _not_ best of clan) in Columbia, SC, against a very respectable field (IIRC LSJ, Steve Wieck, the Tatus, Derek Ray, Jeff Thompson, (myself), Steve Coombs, and myriad others I'm forgetting). I've seen stellar play from the Nos deck in draft play, too. They're certainly more challenging to play, but in the right hands... The format idea is, of course, more to overcome misplaced prejudice than it is to support the notion of these decks truly being weaker. DaveZ Atom Weaver

In message <MPG.1a27f9c6a...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be >> balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which >> will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they >> balanced for a different environment entirely? > >I want them to be ballanced in two ways: >1) In a limitted environment (against other Starters) -it may only >happen once or twice but it matters when it does. >2) In terms of valuable ('ooh') cards. Well, I want a Dodge Viper. Those are questions you are supposed to have the answers to already. >> Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you > >Look at the questions. Then you have to wait and see if you get the >answers. You will never get the answers until you know enough to ask the right questions. Until you can answer the above questions, you won't ever know enough. Some things you are not going to get to know, and it should be fairly obvious from the above questions. Life is not always fair. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <5a3b0aea.03112...@posting.google.com>, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) mumbled something about: >Dear Derek > >First of all - this is just my thoughts. It is not a matter of me >being more right than you or anyone else. To call people less smart >than others just because they have another point of view is called >FLAME or INSULT, and there is a silent agreement to not do that here. >I hope you can agree with this. OK, how's this: You're a brainless fucking moron. I don't know what fictional "silent agreement" you're talking about. USENET has always been home to heated discussions, and if you can't stand the heat, get outta the fire, sonny. You're the one who brought whether you were smart enough into the discussion, and if you read carefully, I even restated it to say that you didn't know enough. If I'm gonna be accused of calling someone less smart, I'm at least gonna be GUILTY of it dammit. Hence the above. >> >Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more >> >balanced, why not do it? >> >> How do you know the playtesters didn't determine that the starters were, >> in fact, balanced? > >Of course I understand the starters are playtested. Probably by better >players than me and people who are better at math and so on. That was >not the question - the question was, to put it simply, why the !Tor >starter has no Blood Doll (instead Con. Boon even though it has kinda >hard to get those through) and no manuvears nor presses, even though >it desperately need some to stand a fight with the others (yes, even >to avoid the Comas in the !Malk deck). It is, however, the question that you must answer prior to asking any of the others. You are making several assumptions, none of which are actively supported by anything other than your own limited personal experience: 1) that it "desperately needs" maneuvers and presses 2) that it is hard to get Consanguineous Boon through 3) that a Blood Doll was necessary in the deck It is quite possible that all these assumptions are incorrect, and since you are basing it only on your own experience, it is highly likely that this is so. This is what I am attempting to show you. >> How do the playtesters compare to actual players? Are the playtesters >> likely to be better or worse? Will this have an effect on the results >> of the testing? Will this have an effect on what happens when a better >> or worse player uses the starter? >> Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the playtesters? >> If so, why? You know nothing about them -- how can you make such a >> conclusion? > >No, see above. I do not consider myself better, I just think in >another way and ask questions. Sorry if that愀 upsetting you. You are thinking in the wrong way. You are asking the wrong questions. You have not provided yourself a secure foundation from which to ask the questions you are attempting to ask. I am attempting to teach you something -- specifically, that your personal experience means next to nothing when it comes to determining whether the starters are balanced, and whether the changes you suggest should be made. Clearly you are not willing to learn. This is your problem. Until you learn to ask the right questions, you will not get answers. >> Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be >> balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which >> will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they >> balanced for a different environment entirely? > >I guess the Starter decks are constructed for It does not matter what you guess. It only matters what you know. Until you KNOW the answers to all the above questions, your conclusions will always be flawed and inaccurate. >> Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you >> can correctly assess the situation, and from this, have an informed >> opinion to base statements like yours on? > >Of course I don愒 know if I correctly assess the situation. How could Then start correctly assessing the situation, and stop babbling. >I? Do you know if you do? I am allowed to have an opinion, and so do >you. I am allowed to ask WW questions, and they are of course allowed >to refuse to answer them. Then I am allowed to criticize that choice, >and ask again, this time WHY they make that choice. And I'm allowed to call you a whiny bastard. That's an opinion. Life is not always fair. Sometimes you don't get to know things. >> The downside in this case is that nobody would be satisfied with the >> answer to the question itself; instead, it would simply provoke more >> questions, whether or not you yourself were satisfied with the original >> answer. > >How can you say that "nobody would be satisfied with the answer"? Because I've done this for a living for many years. I have that little thing known as "real world experience" in a support department, as a network administrator, as a QA analyst, and in many other places where I have had to deal directly with people who want to always ask "why". I can assure you that if you ever start answering "why", nobody is ever satisfied, and they simply keep asking new "why" questions. >People ask companies questions all the time and get satisfied with the >answers. How often does is happen that _another_ customer gets >dissatiesfied with one customer getting his question answered? I don't know. However, another customer is generally dissatisfied with the ANSWER ITSELF that the initial customer received about ...100% of the time, because people are different. Sell your product to a wide enough audience and you are guaranteed to have 10,000 different opinions as to what the product should be. Attempt to respond to all the "why why why" questions, and you get nothing done. You waste all your time answering questions. >> Every last one of those questioners think they can do better >> than WW; every last one of you is wrong, or you would be running a game >> company yourself. Yes, that is a fact. > >No, that is not a fact, it is just you愉e opinion. And I do most Yes, that is a fact. >certainly not agree. Think about that assumption again - Why would I Well, that's why you're not running a game company, isn't it? >run a game company just because I sometimes (lets say, one in twenty >times) think I could run a game company better than WW? And even if I >ALWAYS think I could run a company better than WW (which I do not), it >is many many many other factors that make me not even try to start a >game company (= the market is flooded, I have not the starting money >and so on). Logical or? None of those reasons stand up to the primary one: you don't believe you can succeed, because you know that you don't know what you're doing. If you honestly believed you knew what you were doing, you could obtain a loan, overtake the entire market, etc., and you would have done so long ago. Instead, you recognize that others are the experts in the field, and not you, and as such you don't open a game company; a fair decision, nobody can be an expert in everything. But yet you still stand on the sidelines throwing pop bottles and think you can do better? Foolish. >> If you make a foolish attempt to answer every single question, then you >> rapidly become a company that answers questions instead of a company >> that gets things done > >I don愒 agree. In discussing things like this with players/customers, Again, I do this type of thing for a living. You don't have to agree, but it's true nevertheless. >a company could learn much more (= "get things done") than in No. >answering questions than most literate people could find in the >rulebook. Even though that is also a GREAT customer service - keep up >the good work LSJ! Questions about the game and rulebook are important to answer. Questions about internal design processes are NOT important to answer, and are just time-wasters as they generate more useless questions. >> -- or worse, you become a company that makes >> thousands of miniscule changes which ruin the product entirely. > >No. A good game developer could see the difference between stuff like Yes. Either you waste your time answering all the questions and NOT making changes, or you waste your time answering the questions and waste more time making the changes. Either way you waste a lot of time. Best to just ignore questions. >"Print more vamps with the Ian Forestal-ability" and stuff like "How >did you motivate this, in my opinion, odd selection of cards in the >!Tor starter?". I assume WW has made a choice in this case, and in the Yes, they have. By saying they made the wrong choice, you are saying they don't know what they're doing. I say a company who's been doing this for longer than you've even been playing the game is much more likely to get it right than you EVER will be; and judging from some of your responses, I don't think you'll ever come close. >case with the changed card backgrounds for CE. And I think it愀 a >wrong choice. Think whatever you want. Understand that you do not have the foundation to make an accurate assessment of the situation. Then either make an effort to gain that foundation, or shut up. >> Instead, you provide a product. You realize that the product will not >> satisfy everyone. You make every reasonable effort to make the product >> a Good Thing for the majority of players; and then you leave it alone, >> and never, EVER answer questions about design decisions, because it's >> just a waste of time. >> Successful companies remember that you cannot make everyone happy. > >While I cannot talk for every other player, I can talk for me and many >of the players in my game enviroment. NONE of these players understand Anecdotal evidence from a single source. >why the !Tor starter is composed as it is. I扉e also seen lots of >other people ask the same question (read the rest of this thread if >you don愒 believe me). And it was kinda the same thing with the CE >Nosferatu starter. If you don't understand why, then you should begin by answering the questions I posed originally. Instead, you have failed to even understand why those questions are necessary to answer in the first place; this just means that you aren't interested in getting the picture, but are instead simply making noise. I am not surprised. >> >WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on >> >various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like >> >this? >> >> Because people like you don't listen and don't think. > >Incorrect. I do listen and I do think, and I also have the ability to >understand that other people do and have own opinions. That is why I >try not to insult them by telling them that they don愒 think. Right now, you aren't listening, and you aren't thinking. Stop babbling about "opinions" and start trying to understand. >> >attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). >> >> But why should you get to know that information? You'll just use it to >> complain more if you don't like it... and if you do like it, someone >> else who doesn't will just use it to complain. > >If I had the answer I would understand. I like to understand. It helps But you aren't even making the effort to understand. >> Do you really think everyone agrees with your viewpoint? If you do, >> you're wrong. That simple. > >Have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint? No. I can >only talk for myself, and sometimes I can refer to people I know with >the same opinion, and people on this newsgroup. Again, I ask you >Derek, have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint? Then how can you even believe that yours is the correct change to make? You haven't even come close to determining the full range of opinions on the subject, much less generate any sort of foundation to form a useful opinion from. All you've done is have an opinion. Big deal. Everyone has an opinion. Most people have lots. They mean nothing. [ quoted text not captured ]

btw I agree about the loaded questions and aggressive criticism. Derek Ray expounded: > >> Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be > >> balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which > >> will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they > >> balanced for a different environment entirely? > > > >I want them to be ballanced in two ways: > >1) In a limitted environment (against other Starters) -it may only > >happen once or twice but it matters when it does. > >2) In terms of valuable ('ooh') cards. > > Well, I want a Dodge Viper. > > Those are questions you are supposed to have the answers to already. I do :P you are the one asking them and then claiming I don't without waiting for a response. Well actuallly you were making that claim about someone else but you should still have waited for a response. I answered a couple of your questions and you started talking about a "Dodge Viper"... Most of your other questions were essentially irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good the playtesters were as players -if they weren't good enough that is a fault in the process. If it's possible for them to be too good and they were then that is a flaw too. It also doesn't matter if I am better than them. Now it may be that some deck is as powerful as another but requires more skill to play. This is something that is best avoided in a set of Starters. I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily checked by looking at the various price lists but I assumed that someone who made such a claim knew what they were talking about and they weren't contradicted. Maybe people disagree with that. If you do please tell us why. That is something that i would expect to be balanced but was not something I was complaining about. I have asked people who won how they did it and looked at losing decks as well as playing the !Tor myself. All the winners got some smaller vampires. I know that the size of my vampires handicapped me and others made the same complaint. There was a LOT of intercept in the set and the !Tor only had access to Stealth Ritus for stealth. The lack of maneuvers made rush a very weak strategy and there were no ousting votes. That left bleeding and blocking -big minions so few bleed actions with very little boost or stealth and nothing to do about it if they got bounced. Now I know that all Starters have their weaknesses but I hold to the opinion that the !Tor were underpowered in the BH Starter Set. Fixing all the problems I have outlined would probably have made them too powerful but *some* strengthening would have been a very good thing. Having played most of them now, I think that the Malks could have been tones down a little bit and the other two were good. I think the !Malk deck offered the most opportunities for deckbuilding. > You will never get the answers until you know enough to ask the right > questions. Until you can answer the above questions, you won't ever > know enough. Some things you are not going to get to know, and it > should be fairly obvious from the above questions. > > Life is not always fair. I just don't understand what you're waffling about here. *You* (derek) asked the question. You should have the decency to wait for answers before assuming they won't be forthcoming (whatever you may think of your interlocutor). I haven't asked any questions. I expressed an opinion and answered your question.

salem <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<4l2srvkk0cpv638a4...@4ax.com>... > On 21 Nov 2003 04:15:44 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) > scrawled: > > >Dear Derek > > > >First of all - this is just my thoughts. It is not a matter of me > >being more right than you or anyone else. To call people less smart > >than others just because they have another point of view is called > >FLAME or INSULT, and there is a silent agreement to not do that here. > >I hope you can agree with this. > > I don't tbink people have any such silent agreement. There will be > flames, there will be trolls, there will be insults. I don't expect > that to change on _any_ public forum any time soon. It's not pretty, > but it's how it is. > > Better get used to it. Especially from Derek, as he is quite > enthusiastic about his opinions. :) OK, sorry my mistake. The forums I“ve visited earlier, like the WW Online one, had some kind of such agreement. Then it“s OK to insult me if somebody cannot stand normal discussion. Their choice, but I myself will try to avoid it.

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3FBDF493...@white-wolf.com>... > Henrik Klippstr?m wrote: > > WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > > various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > > this? > > I have. > For those of you who missed it: One of the goals in designing the > precons is that they be balanced. As if it needed repeating. Sorry, but I think that is the answer to something like "Is one of your goals to design balanced precons?" Why so laconic? Please answer some of my real questions (like why are there 5 Templars and no Blood Dolls or manuvears/presses in the !Tor starters, and why so much secrecy about this whole thing, also see my other posts on this thread). And sorry for using words like "hell" and "shitty" in that first post, that was foolish but came from the heart that time.

>Most of your other questions were essentially irrelevant. It doesn't >matter how good the playtesters were as players -if they weren't good >enough that is a fault in the process. If it's possible for them to be >too good and they were then that is a flaw too. I playtested for a CCG with a small player base. CCG also happened to be power rare heavy. We ran into a problem that I'm sure is run into often even if it is usually a minor one and even if it's rarely noticed. The problem was that we were playing on a different level than the average player. More specifically, because we were playing on a different level, it became unclear how to fix cards/strategies while playtesting. If we balanced for our level, then it would appear unbalanced to the people who didn't have all of the rares/ultrarares/promos and/or to the people who didn't understand the rules (the original rulebook was crap, for instance, it lacked timing rules, which weren't decided upon until the first expansion) and/or to the people who thought they were a lot better than they were, a more common situation with a smaller player base. I don't think it's possible to try to have playtesters test to the level of someone else because they wouldn't know when they are supposed to be "smart" and when not. Of course, ideally, playtesters are 1) better than the masses and 2) try to educate the masses to close the gap in knowledge and skill. In practice, doesn't work so well. >It also doesn't matter if I am better than them. Now it may be that some >deck is as powerful as another but requires more skill to play. This is >something that is best avoided in a set of Starters. On a tangent, it occurs to me Dauntain probably didn't get reprinted because the !Trem player would be superannoyed to be the !Malk's predator. Could work around him being in play, but it might be too restrictive. Anyway, I think too much concern is being put into the play merits of the precons. They really don't see much play as far as I can tell. Then, they quickly morph when adding cards. One of the major reasons I think different areas get different results at the prereleases is that they play them under different rules. Some draft, some don't. Some play with more cards. Some trade. Etc. When we tested precons for that CCG, we didn't test adding any cards until the second batch were in the works, course we had all of about 3 weeks to test the original set's nonprecon cards, which was just great for producing a balanced game (then, new rules got added into the rulebook after playtesting was over, have I ranted lately about how playtesting was the most frustrating thing I've ever done vis-a-vis CCGs?). The second batch never got made. Point being that it's not likely to be a top priority to get precons to play right. I guess another point might be that, even if it were a top priority, playing precons quickly becomes tedious, so it's hard to get into rigorous precon testing. >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily >checked by looking at the various price lists but I assumed that someone >who made such a claim knew what they were talking about and they weren't >contradicted. Maybe people disagree with that. If you do please tell us >why. That is something that i would expect to be balanced but was not >something I was complaining about. I don't think this is being argued much. Palla and Scam are probably as good as anything if you already owned !Trem stuff.

In message <MPG.1a28cdec1...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: >btw I agree about the loaded questions and aggressive criticism. > >Derek Ray expounded: >> >> Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be >> >> balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which >> >> will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they >> >> balanced for a different environment entirely? >> > >> >I want them to be ballanced in two ways: >> >1) In a limitted environment (against other Starters) -it may only >> >happen once or twice but it matters when it does. >> >2) In terms of valuable ('ooh') cards. >> >> Well, I want a Dodge Viper. >> >> Those are questions you are supposed to have the answers to already. > >I do :P you are the one asking them and then claiming I don't without >waiting for a response. Well actuallly you were making that claim about >someone else but you should still have waited for a response. I answered >a couple of your questions and you started talking about a "Dodge >Viper"... That's because you only have YOUR answers. You don't have the real answers. The only people who have the real answers are the people who designed the starters, and they ain't tellin'. Until you know the answer to the question "What environment did the designers and playtesters attempt to balance the starters for?", you can't move forward effectively. Hence, my statement about a Dodge Viper -- it has equal relevance. >Most of your other questions were essentially irrelevant. It doesn't >matter how good the playtesters were as players -if they weren't good >enough that is a fault in the process. If it's possible for them to be >too good and they were then that is a flaw too. None of my questions were irrelevant. All were critical to making an accurate assessment of whether or not the starters are balanced. If the playtesters are better than the people who are complaining, then it is likely that the people complaining simply do not understand how to play the decks properly. This is not a flaw in the starters, it is a flaw in the players. If the playtesters are WORSE, then clearly there is the potential for the starters to be unbalanced, yes. I doubt they were, but the possibility must be considered. The third possibility must also be considered: that the playtesters were of approximately equal skill to the people playing the decks, and therefore we must look elsewhere. And there is even a fourth possibility: the complainers are attempting to play starter decks with a constructed-deck mentality, while the playtesters were able to treat them as starters... which isn't a direct reflection on skill but IS a factor. Until you know which possibility is true, you cannot move forward. >It also doesn't matter if I am better than them. Now it may be that some >deck is as powerful as another but requires more skill to play. This is >something that is best avoided in a set of Starters. On the other hand, perhaps new players prefer variety -- four friends come in and each buy a different starter, learn to play that starter, and then swap out to learn a new style. I understand this approach garnered quite a bit of revenue for some people who made a "Street Fighter" arcade game; each character required a completely different approach to play, and it became quite popular as a result. You cannot conclude that it is "best avoided" without knowing additional information that you have no way of obtaining. >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily But are the starters balanced for new players or veterans? Your above paragraph assumes the first, but this statement assumes the second. See how tangled up you can get without defining your environment? >checked by looking at the various price lists but I assumed that someone >who made such a claim knew what they were talking about and they weren't >contradicted. Maybe people disagree with that. If you do please tell us >why. That is something that i would expect to be balanced but was not >something I was complaining about. Different people will have different opinions of what a "valuable ooh" card is. Perhaps there are equal amounts of "ooh" cards in each deck in the playtesters' eyes. And here we touch on the skill question again, which, by the way, we still haven't answered. On the other hand, perhaps "valuable ooh" wasn't even a criteria... Again, you have no way to form a conclusion or even a worthwhile opinion without gaining additional information. >I have asked people who won how they did it and looked at losing decks >as well as playing the !Tor myself. All the winners got some smaller >vampires. I know that the size of my vampires handicapped me and others >made the same complaint. I guarantee that your statistics are fallacious; you have surely not asked every single person who won with the !Toreador how they did it, nor have you interviewed every person who LOST with the !Toreador. You have not done any sort of skill comparison of the winners and losers, nor a skill comparison of the players they faced... and as such this is simply anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to draw valid conclusions from. You have not even listed the single detail of how many people you asked. Oh, and while we're at it, is it conceivable that there is a skill factor here that we have not previously considered -- the knowledge to draft smaller vampires to improve the deck? Again, a complete lack of information. >There was a LOT of intercept in the set and the !Tor only had access to >Stealth Ritus for stealth. This is useful information. >The lack of maneuvers made rush a very weak >strategy and there were no ousting votes. That left bleeding and >blocking -big minions so few bleed actions with very little boost or >stealth and nothing to do about it if they got bounced. These are arbitrary conclusions drawn from inadequate information (except the "no damage votes" part). I saw a !Toreador deck breeze through a !Tremere deck at our prerelease, making good use of Amaranth. >Now I know that all Starters have their weaknesses but I hold to the >opinion that the !Tor were underpowered in the BH Starter Set. Fixing >all the problems I have outlined would probably have made them too >powerful but *some* strengthening would have been a very good thing. You have no factual basis for this opinion, however. >> You will never get the answers until you know enough to ask the right >> questions. Until you can answer the above questions, you won't ever >> know enough. Some things you are not going to get to know, and it >> should be fairly obvious from the above questions. >> >> Life is not always fair. > >I just don't understand what you're waffling about here. *You* (derek) >asked the question. You should have the decency to wait for answers >before assuming they won't be forthcoming (whatever you may think of >your interlocutor). Who's waffling? I'm describing the process by which you can gain enough information to ask the right questions. The only problem here that I can see is that you don't/didn't realize that YOUR answers to the questions I posed don't matter. It's how the DESIGNERS answered them that matters; and until you know those answers, all opinions are so much airy speculation. Since the design team has been pretty shut-mouthed in the past about "why" questions, I see no reason to believe that you will obtain those answers; therefore, I do not need to wait. >I haven't asked any questions. I expressed an opinion and answered your >question. But YOU can't answer my question. You can find the answer, though. [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pd5trvk34omnp1tkh...@4ax.com>... > In message <5a3b0aea.03112...@posting.google.com>, > as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) mumbled something about: > > >Dear Derek > > > >First of all - this is just my thoughts. It is not a matter of me > >being more right than you or anyone else. To call people less smart > >than others just because they have another point of view is called > >FLAME or INSULT, and there is a silent agreement to not do that here. > >I hope you can agree with this. > > OK, how's this: You're a brainless fucking moron. OK, but I love you. And your mother. Remember that. > I don't know what fictional "silent agreement" you're talking about. > USENET has always been home to heated discussions, and if you can't > stand the heat, get outta the fire, sonny. You're the one who brought > whether you were smart enough into the discussion, and if you read > carefully, I even restated it to say that you didn't know enough. I can stand your kind of heat. In fact, it´s kinda fun to burn in it. And by saying "ýou do not think" I guessed you where refering to how smart I am. Was that also a brainless guess? > You are making several assumptions, none of which are actively supported > by anything other than your own limited personal experience: > > 1) that it "desperately needs" maneuvers and presses > 2) that it is hard to get Consanguineous Boon through > 3) that a Blood Doll was necessary in the deck > > It is quite possible that all these assumptions are incorrect, and since > you are basing it only on your own experience, it is highly likely that > this is so. So WHY is it possible. I have seen the deck. I have seen hundreds of other decks. I have played the game since 1994. I can that the deck needs manuvears/presses and more things to get through a Con. Boon (or that it needs Blood Dolls). Why are these observations so very very very wrong? And why is it worth so much time and energy to call me stupid instead of saying something about my questions? Why the secrecy? Are WW afraid that I´m gonna steal their playtesting tech and make my own card game based on that knowledge? > >> How do the playtesters compare to actual players? Are the playtesters > >> likely to be better or worse? Will this have an effect on the results > >> of the testing? Will this have an effect on what happens when a better > >> or worse player uses the starter? > >> Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the playtesters? > >> If so, why? You know nothing about them -- how can you make such a > >> conclusion? > > > >No, see above. I do not consider myself better, I just think in > >another way and ask questions. Sorry if that´s upsetting you. > > You are thinking in the wrong way. > > You are asking the wrong questions. You have not provided yourself a > secure foundation from which to ask the questions you are attempting to > ask. I cannot have a more secure foundation, because WW will not let me. I can only base my opinions on my own observations. This is a method of logic which I prefer to use frequently. > I am attempting to teach you something -- specifically, that your > personal experience means next to nothing when it comes to determining > whether the starters are balanced, and whether the changes you suggest > should be made. Why are my personal experience so very, very bad? Why is it so bad that I cannot even ask questions? > Clearly you are not willing to learn. This is your problem. Until you > learn to ask the right questions, you will not get answers. So, in your opinion, what questions should I ask if not the ones I want to find answers for? What questions would you ask WW (or anyone that cares to come with answers) now that you know what I realy want to get answered? > >> Oh, that reminds me. Are the preconstructed starters supposed to be > >> balanced for a pre-release draft (read: modified) environment, which > >> will happen exactly once in the lifetime of the starter, or are they > >> balanced for a different environment entirely? > > > >I guess the Starter decks are constructed for > > It does not matter what you guess. Incorrect. Your lack of tolerance for my opinions are very funny indeed. > It only matters what you know. Until you KNOW the answers to all the > above questions, your conclusions will always be flawed and inaccurate. I do not agree. If I only did things after what I know, I would not do much. I do things after my observations, experiences and calculations. > >> Look at all the questions you don't have answers to! And you think you > >> can correctly assess the situation, and from this, have an informed > >> opinion to base statements like yours on? > > > >Of course I don´t know if I correctly assess the situation. How could > > Then start correctly assessing the situation, and stop babbling. Then help me assess correctly and stop flaming me. Please? > >I? Do you know if you do? I am allowed to have an opinion, and so do > >you. I am allowed to ask WW questions, and they are of course allowed > >to refuse to answer them. Then I am allowed to criticize that choice, > >and ask again, this time WHY they make that choice. > > And I'm allowed to call you a whiny bastard. That's an opinion. Yeah, OK, call me whiny. I have criticized WW for VtES exactly three times I think - the CE background colours, the CE starters and now the BH starters. Otherwise I am VERY pleased with the way the game is handled. I you call that a whiny bastard for that, OK. > Life is not always fair. Sometimes you don't get to know things. These kind of arguments you can also find among 10-year-olds. Not that I hang in such crowds alot. > >> The downside in this case is that nobody would be satisfied with the > >> answer to the question itself; instead, it would simply provoke more > >> questions, whether or not you yourself were satisfied with the original > >> answer. > > > >How can you say that "nobody would be satisfied with the answer"? > > Because I've done this for a living for many years. I have that little > thing known as "real world experience" in a support department, as a > network administrator, as a QA analyst, and in many other places where I > have had to deal directly with people who want to always ask "why". I > can assure you that if you ever start answering "why", nobody is ever > satisfied, and they simply keep asking new "why" questions. About the resume of your experiences I can only say: Yes, I agree that you seem to have more experience with CCGs than me, even though I have played since 1994. But thats not a argument for trying to shut me up without even trying to answer my questions is it? No, its more of an argument to make me feel foolish and make you feel good with yourself. > >People ask companies questions all the time and get satisfied with the > >answers. How often does is happen that _another_ customer gets > >dissatiesfied with one customer getting his question answered? > > I don't know. Oh, look at that, you mean it´s a thing you do not know? I thought you knew everything because of you being so experienced. And so narrow-minded. > However, another customer is generally dissatisfied with > the ANSWER ITSELF that the initial customer received about ...100% of > the time, because people are different. Sell your product to a wide > enough audience and you are guaranteed to have 10,000 different opinions > as to what the product should be. Eh? So if I say "I think there should have been 4 Flashes in the !Tor starter" you mean it would be so many other opinions that you could not even consider explaining why it isn´t? Because then you´ll be flooded with mails with other opinions in the matter? I think not. Try to be more concrete please. > Attempt to respond to all the "why why why" questions, and you get > nothing done. You waste all your time answering questions. I do not agree. > >> Every last one of those questioners think they can do better > >> than WW; every last one of you is wrong, or you would be running a game > >> company yourself. Yes, that is a fact. > > > >No, that is not a fact, it is just you´re opinion. And I do most > > Yes, that is a fact. So you mean that EVERY question/suggestion/opinion that WW gets about their games are wrong and could not be learned ANYTHING from? That was amazingly narrow-minded. > >certainly not agree. Think about that assumption again - Why would I > > Well, that's why you're not running a game company, isn't it? No, actually I would like running a game company. Why I don´t depends more on those other factors I mentioned, and that I prefer other things to do with my life even more. I will within a couple of months have two master degrees (scientific journalism and archaeology). > >run a game company just because I sometimes (lets say, one in twenty > >times) think I could run a game company better than WW? And even if I > >ALWAYS think I could run a company better than WW (which I do not), it > >is many many many other factors that make me not even try to start a > >game company (= the market is flooded, I have not the starting money > >and so on). Logical or? > > None of those reasons stand up to the primary one: you don't believe you > can succeed, because you know that you don't know what you're doing. > > If you honestly believed you knew what you were doing, you could obtain > a loan, overtake the entire market, etc., and you would have done so > long ago. > Eh? You astound me. Do you seriously think that it´s enough to BELIEVE in that you can succeed to get something done? Well I guess that´s the american way, or at least some religious way. I can shock you with this _fact_: It´s not enough to believe. Other factors do apply. > Instead, you recognize that others are the experts in the field, and not > you, and as such you don't open a game company; a fair decision, nobody > can be an expert in everything. But yet you still stand on the > sidelines throwing pop bottles and think you can do better? Foolish. > I do not throw any bottles. I ask questions. People do every day, and sometimes they actually make a difference. If nobody did criticize anything not much would happen at all in society. Yeah sure you can think I a fool to try to make a difference. But that is not WW´s general way of treating the players, at least it was not in the RPG section. Maybe CCG-department have another way (I surely seem so, I you work there) > >> If you make a foolish attempt to answer every single question, then you > >> rapidly become a company that answers questions instead of a company > >> that gets things done > > > >I don´t agree. In discussing things like this with players/customers, > > Again, I do this type of thing for a living. You don't have to agree, > but it's true nevertheless. Wow you are sure of yourself aren´t you? Someone else on this forum warned me for you being true to your first opinions, and I guess that person was very right. But I can say it again - You being more experienced with VtES is NEVER an argument for me keeping shut, nor for WW refusing to answer my questions. > >a company could learn much more (= "get things done") than in > > No. If WW would try, they might like it. And if you really work for them - hey! I have already made a difference. The next time you playtest a set for them (if you have such duties? I guess you have) you would keep my words in mind whether you like it or not. > >answering questions than most literate people could find in the > >rulebook. Even though that is also a GREAT customer service - keep up > >the good work LSJ! > > Questions about the game and rulebook are important to answer. Yes. Some are. > Questions about internal design processes are NOT important to answer, > and are just time-wasters as they generate more useless questions. I do not think it would hurt to discuss the game with more players. You would keep down the amount of threads like this one even more. > >> -- or worse, you become a company that makes > >> thousands of miniscule changes which ruin the product entirely. > > > >No. A good game developer could see the difference between stuff like > > Yes. Either you waste your time answering all the questions and NOT > making changes, or you waste your time answering the questions and waste > more time making the changes. > Either way you waste a lot of time. Best to just ignore questions. Oboy you are conservative! Cute. But dead wrong in any business. I think sensible and progressive is better. WW is known for being very sensible and progressive. But I guess those days are gone now or? > >"Print more vamps with the Ian Forestal-ability" and stuff like "How > >did you motivate this, in my opinion, odd selection of cards in the > >!Tor starter?". I assume WW has made a choice in this case, and in the > > Yes, they have. By saying they made the wrong choice, you are saying > they don't know what they're doing. I have never said WW "don´t know what they´re doing". You are over-reacting in an almost rabid way. I merely questioned ONE of their choices - the card selection in the !Tor starter. > I say a company who's been doing this for longer than you've even been > playing the game is much more likely to get it right than you EVER will > be; and judging from some of your responses, I don't think you'll ever > come close. Incorrect. I started playing this game when it first came out, 1994. At that time the game was published by Wizards of the Coast. This means I have been playing this game for longer than WW has been "doing this". But feel free to judge my responses in what way you like. > >case with the changed card backgrounds for CE. And I think it´s a > >wrong choice. > > Think whatever you want. Understand that you do not have the foundation > to make an accurate assessment of the situation. Then either make an > effort to gain that foundation, or shut up. I have made an effort to make a good foundation - I have read numerous threads, Q&As, chat transcripts and so on without any developer giving any real answer to why the backgrounds had to be changed so drastically as they was for CE. And I like to quote one of your very mature and insightful utterances: "Shut up" yourself. > >While I cannot talk for every other player, I can talk for me and many > >of the players in my game enviroment. NONE of these players understand > > Anecdotal evidence from a single source. LOL! Do you mean I should send around a petition or what? Do you realy think I should bother to voice an opinion like this if I knew nobody shares it? All players in my playgroup agreed, as well as the people before me in this thread. > If you don't understand why, then you should begin by answering the > questions I posed originally. Instead, you have failed to even > understand why those questions are necessary to answer in the first > place; this just means that you aren't interested in getting the > picture, but are instead simply making noise. No I do not understand why those questions have anything to do with my questions. (if you mean "How do the playtesters compare to actual players? Are the playtesters likely to be better or worse? Will this have an effect on the results of the testing? Will this have an effect on what happens when a better or worse player uses the starter? Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the playtesters?) For example, I do not see how the question of if a playtester is better or worse than an actual player have anyhting to do with the amount of Templars in one specific starter deck. BUT! if WW or you could bother to explain it, I would be very happy. Explain it. If I understand it, and the other questions, I would gladely go away and stop taking up your expensive time. > >> >WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > >> >various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > >> >this? > >> > >> Because people like you don't listen and don't think. > > > >Incorrect. I do listen and I do think, and I also have the ability to > >understand that other people do and have own opinions. That is why I > >try not to insult them by telling them that they don´t think. > > Right now, you aren't listening, and you aren't thinking. Incorrect. I am doing so after the best of my ability and logic. > Stop babbling about "opinions" and start trying to understand. "Opinions" and "understanding" does not have to contradict each other. I hoped that airing my opinions could LEAD to understanding. > >> >attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). > >> > >> But why should you get to know that information? You'll just use it to > >> complain more if you don't like it... and if you do like it, someone > >> else who doesn't will just use it to complain. > > > >If I had the answer I would understand. I like to understand. It helps > > But you aren't even making the effort to understand. Yes, I am. However experienced in VtES you are, I don´t think you are able to analyze my efforts accurately. > >> Do you really think everyone agrees with your viewpoint? If you do, > >> you're wrong. That simple. > > > >Have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint? No. I can > >only talk for myself, and sometimes I can refer to people I know with > >the same opinion, and people on this newsgroup. Again, I ask you > >Derek, have I EVER stated that everyone agrees with my viewpoint? > > Then how can you even believe that yours is the correct change to make? Again, a number of experienced players, well-educated people with bright minds have made the same observations as I have. Also, I have never suggested that any change should be made, as the starters are already printed. I was just airing my opinion - to get to understand how WW thought, and maybe try to make a point for them to think of before next time. > You haven't even come close to determining the full range of opinions on > the subject, much less generate any sort of foundation to form a useful > opinion from. All you've done is have an opinion. Big deal. Everyone > has an opinion. Most people have lots. They mean nothing. "Opinions mean nothing"? This coming from a guy that quotes Charles Darwin at the end of each post? Allow me to smirk! Ever thought about quoting Josef Stalin or Saddam Hussein instead?

> > > I think its more unexplainable to expect four (or three, or six) > > > starters to be perfectly balanced in play against one another (and > > > against previous starters). I also think its unexplainable to say > > > that all the starters are unfair if one of the starters happens to be > > > weaker than the others. To each his own, I suppose... > > > > Question: If you have the possiblity to make _all_ the starters more > > balanced, why not do it? > > > > This isn't related to the original topic you posed. That is correct. I was referring to the the previous poster, and I was saying that it愀 not "fair" for one starter to be weaker than the others, if avoidable. >The simple answer > is workload. After some level of playtesting, there is a diminsihing > return on "tweaking" decks to balance against one another, because it > is a near-total unknown as to the exact environment that the deck will > be played in. Possibilities include: > > 1) Four player, one of each BH clan, with no deck mods > 2) Five player, mixed decks from BH and other expansions, no deck mods > 3) #1, plus 3 booster draft > 4) #2, plus 3 booster draft > 5) #1, plus 3 booster sealed > 6) #2, plus 3 booster sealed > 7) Sealed two-starter decks (same clan) > 8) Sealed two starter decks (different clan) > 9) Standard Pre-Release Format > 10) Storyline Tournament with a Limited (Draft) format > 11) ... > > This list is theoretically infinite. In which environment do you > balance the decks _more_? The answer is likely different for each > one. My observation: In ANY sealed deck enviroment the deck has problems with lack of blood gain, manuvears and presses. This urges no extensive playtesting to find out. > > Why not? Are you implying that all companies that listens to their > > customers, and all companies that have a customer service department, > > are not smart? I don愒 think a company can lose anything to answer a > > question from a customer. But I guess I惴 not that smart then? > > > I cast no aspersions on your intelligence, but I think we have a slang > language barrier here. Can someone please provide an understandable > translation of 'baited' for Henrik? Let me give you an example of > baited questioning. ><snip, very good example of baited questioning> I do indeed understand what was meant by baited (I have a master in journalism and I do know of 'bait' that you catch fish with). But I can never go as far as agreeing to that it would be SUICIDAL of WW to answer questions like these. WW has not much to hide, and when a subject get愀 to out of hand they could always cut. Or? > Yes, your original questions were similar to this scenario... From > your original post: > > "I agree. The !Tor seem to suck... Once again WW has failed to make > the > starters fair. Why the **** are there no Blood Dolls in the !Tor > deck??! And why no manuvears? And WHY 5 copies of the super-shitty > Templar? I guess we will never know, because WW never answers > questions like these." > > You've now toned down to a meek 'I just wanted to know why it was made > the way it was'. You original post in no way impled that you would be > reasonable in listening to the response, even if one were given. Even > if you were reasoned in your view of the response, some other nut > wouldn't be. So yes, it is Foolish for Companies to answer baited > questions... Sorry, I did not guess that WW would feel insultet by words like "****" and "shitty". And I always am resonable. Always. And its also my experience that WW, of some reason, tend to avoid to discuss things like these (how cute the questions/opinions are packed). > > > > Yes, as a matter of fact, I would feel inclined to answer questions > > > > from customers if I worked at WW. Isn愒 that the way _all_ normal > > > > companies work? > > > > > > Smart companies (like White Wolf) recognize a losing fight when they > > > see it, and choose not to watse manpower for nothing. Giving Henrik > > > an answer, or changing to accomodate him would just leave some other > > > player, with a different perspective on the problem, dissatisfied with > > > the new solution. The net gain for the company is negative, since > > > they put effort and manpower into solving Henrik's issue, but lost the > > > support of another player as a consequence. You can't please all of > > > the peope all of the time. I'm sorry it had to be Henrik that was > > > dissatisfied this particular time, but it was bound to be somebody... > > > > Question: Why is it a losing fight to explain why the starters are > > constructed as they are? > > See Derek Ray's excellent response. I suspect you never meant for the > question to be answered directly when you asked it orignally. It was > a baited question, meant to express your frustration that the !Tor > deck ended up a little weaker than the rest. If you did really want a > response to specifics, you'd have phrased the question differently, to > show that you might be reasonable in considering the response. Or, > you might have asked LSJ in a private email... First: I mailed LSJ privatly about the lack of good rares in the Nos CE starters making it hard to get by starters because retailers refused to by in more boxes as long as the Nos starters was still on the shelf. His "answer" was barely a sentence and something like "We try to make good starters". Second: I also tried to find out why the card background colours was changed for CE (especially the vamp ones) - no decent reply in either forums, FAQs or chat transcripts. > > And, again, I do not agree that such a thing is a waste of manpower. > > WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on > > various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like > > this? > > Being the Net Rep means that he has to answer rules questions, yes. > It doesn't mean he (or any other WW representative) needs to open the > doors wide to every White Wolf policy and design decision... Who has talked about open doors wide open? > > And why would some other player be dissatisfied with me getting a > > question answered? > > If they don't like the answer, they'll be asking other questions of > their own. I'd guess about thirty people won't like the answer to > your one question on design, and will bury the rep in design-related > dialogue with no satisfactory resolution, and ultimately no productive > results. OK. That is your guess. I have another guess. We are all guessing and that is why this forum is around mainly, for people to discuss this hobby. You are very tolerant and reasonable, while I think Derek Ray is less reasonable. He seem only to want to shut up people with other opinions. But I kinda like him anyway - he is amusing. > > Or why would any other player be dissatisfied with > > all the starters getting 2 Blood Dolls each and manuevers/presses in > > the deck that desperately needs it? (and then the decks balanced after > > that?) I don愒 get your logic. > > The logic is that there will _always_ be a dissatisfied individual. > _Always_. This is because not everyone will agree on the right "fix" > for the decks. Whats more, a fix to make the !Tor deck stronger will > likely leave some other deck (and its associated fans) as the weakest > deck. All this aside, if a company opens the doors of its design > decisions to the average consumer, then the company soon becomes run > by thousands, and that business model is doomed to failure. Yes, I agree that there most likely always will be a dissatisfied individual. But this time it seems to be more than one. And I don愒 think removing some Templars and some ST Investments and adding a couple of Blood Dolls, some Change of Targets and some Flashes would make the !Tor deck that over-powered compared to the other starters. > > (And one other thing - I do understand that the Toreador is playtested > > by WW against the other decks, and that it certainly CAN win games, > > even tournaments maybe, but there are many other factors that matter > > for that to happen. Like who is playing it and what other players that > > attend. I just want to know why it is constructed as it is). > > > > Maybe by now, you do. In the start, though, you were just venting > steam... OK, I take back "****" and "super-shitty". Sorry. But considering the words used by my friend Derek Ray to describe my mental health, they seem kinda weak. > > > Again, are _all_ the starters made unfair by the fact that a minority > > > fraction are less powerful than the rest? Of course not. The > > > productive thing of this thread is that I'm tempted to run a draft > > > with the "weaker clans"; Anarchs, !Ven, Assamite, Nos and !Tor, only. > > > It'd be great fun... > > > > Again, I don愒 get your logic - If you have the possibility to balance > > _all_ the starters better, why not do so? Why leave one deck less > > playable than the others? > > > Why not do so? Because no matter how much better you balance the > decks, there will always be a deck that is weakest (in certain > environments). The value of additional work diminishes exponentially, > so one has to draw a line somewhere as to how much work is done > balancing decks. The actual playability differences between all of > the starters (with the possible exception of the !Venture) is small. > Much smaller than this thread implies. Whats more, none of this takes > into account the format of the game, either. Given the right > circumstance (say, two-deck sealed with different clans), I'd be > picking up the !Tor as my main deck. I understand this - see above about different formats. But for example a two-deck sealed it would have 10 (!) Templars, no more Blood Dolls (which I hope you can agree is a better gainer than Investments and Boons which are blocked cause they have intercept and manuvears and lots of other badass stuff and you have no manuvears, no presses and just a Stake/Cleaver at best) and no more manuvears/presses (unless you add some boosters and have luck pulling the right cards). I guess you get my point? Even though you might not agree.

On 21 Nov 2003 21:37:34 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) scrawled: [snip] >Second: I also tried to find out why the card background colours was >changed for CE (especially the vamp ones) - no decent reply in either >forums, FAQs or chat transcripts. as near as i can tell, the old backgrounds were art owned by Wizards, that WW had to license to use. WW using their own backgrounds meant they were _their own_ backgrounds. Of course, the backgrounds they chose to create do seem to be somewhat similar to each other in a lot of cases (ventrue, tremere, tremere anti, for example). and the text boxes are very hard to read on a lot of crypt cards. but, now i'm just rehashing stuff from ages ago and totally hijacking this thread so i'll just shut up... [ quoted text not captured ]

salem <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<mc3urvsr8npuq4cvl...@4ax.com>... d: > [snip]> On 21 Nov 2003 21:37:34 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) > scrawle > >Second: I also tried to find out why the card background colours was > >changed for CE (especially the vamp ones) - no decent reply in either > >forums, FAQs or chat transcripts. > > as near as i can tell, the old backgrounds were art owned by Wizards, > that WW had to license to use. WW using their own backgrounds meant > they were _their own_ backgrounds. > > Of course, the backgrounds they chose to create do seem to be somewhat > similar to each other in a lot of cases (ventrue, tremere, tremere > anti, for example). and the text boxes are very hard to read on a lot > of crypt cards. but, now i'm just rehashing stuff from ages ago and > totally hijacking this thread so i'll just shut up... No, don´t shut up. Thanks for that theory. It sounds very possible. Could someone at WW confirm this? Very nasty of Wizards to be THAT hard to deal the copyrights from though, if an effort realy was made. But money makes the world go round.

Derek Ray: > That's because you only have YOUR answers. You don't have the real > answers. The only people who have the real answers are the people who > designed the starters, and they ain't tellin'. Yeah, most of your "arguments" (if one can call them that) in this thread is like "They know - you don愒, so shut up!" We seem to disagree. Face it. > Until you know the answer to the question "What environment did the > designers and playtesters attempt to balance the starters for?", you > can't move forward effectively. ALL of my assessments is based on play in a sealed deck enviroment only. It won愒 matter if you play 1 starter only - 1 starter+3 boosters - 2 starters or whatever. > If the playtesters are better than the people who are complaining, then > it is likely that the people complaining simply do not understand how to > play the decks properly. This is not a flaw in the starters, it is a > flaw in the players. Thanks for the dizz. Why not make the !Tor deck as easy to play as the other decks then? THAT would be fair to any player in any skill level in any enviroment or? Why make one deck more "tricky"? Are we suppossed to give that deck to the best player in our group (swedish champion Erik T every time we want to play a BH-sealed deck, just to even things out? I think that would suck. > And there is even a fourth possibility: the complainers are attempting > to play starter decks with a constructed-deck mentality, while the > playtesters were able to treat them as starters... which isn't a direct > reflection on skill but IS a factor. I assure you most of the people who bother to complain has made their best effort in playing the decks in the BH set after their best ability against the other decks. I guess that would force them to use the sealed deck-mentality or? Especially if they have made more than one effort. > Until you know which possibility is true, you cannot move forward. > > >It also doesn't matter if I am better than them. Now it may be that some > >deck is as powerful as another but requires more skill to play. This is > >something that is best avoided in a set of Starters. > > On the other hand, perhaps new players prefer variety -- four friends > come in and each buy a different starter, learn to play that starter, > and then swap out to learn a new style. > > I understand this approach garnered quite a bit of revenue for some > people who made a "Street Fighter" arcade game; each character required > a completely different approach to play, and it became quite popular as > a result. > > You cannot conclude that it is "best avoided" without knowing additional > information that you have no way of obtaining. Again, more of this "You don愒 know so shut up and get away from this newsgroup"-mentality. I惴 not sure you talk for ANYBODY more than yourself when you make these statements. > >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily > > But are the starters balanced for new players or veterans? At least my first post here was ALL about Sealed deck enviroment. The discussion about "Ooh-cards" and the discussion about the precons playability versus other constructed decks is something else - that is about WW knowing how to sell cards and knowing how to please their customers. This was a problem with the CE Nosferatu starter, which 1.) Did not include any Oooh-cards and 2.) Did not do well against any other decks - I tested this by buying 2 of each starter and only a few boosters and played against a broad variety of real constructed decks i Stockholm - the Ventrue 2-starter deck performed VERY good while the Nosf one was miserable. > Different people will have different opinions of what a "valuable ooh" > card is. Perhaps there are equal amounts of "ooh" cards in each deck in > the playtesters' eyes. And here we touch on the skill question again, > which, by the way, we still haven't answered. If WW would like to know what cards could be added to sell more starters, they could check http://vtesinla.org/db_prices.asp? to determine which cards are "ooh-cards" for most players. That list shows demand. > >I have asked people who won how they did it and looked at losing decks > >as well as playing the !Tor myself. All the winners got some smaller > >vampires. I know that the size of my vampires handicapped me and others > >made the same complaint. > > I guarantee that your statistics are fallacious; you have surely not > asked every single person who won with the !Toreador how they did it, > nor have you interviewed every person who LOST with the !Toreador. You > have not done any sort of skill comparison of the winners and losers, > nor a skill comparison of the players they faced... and as such this is > simply anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to draw valid conclusions > from. This "your statistics are fallacious"-stuff is weird. I惴 sure Timlagor understand that his observations are not statisticly bullet-proof, but just observations. So, yes, almost everything stated at this newsgroups are "anecdotal evidence". But I hope you understand that many "anecdotes" together say something - no smoke without fire eh? (I also hope that you could be concrete and see that the !Tor deck is weird just by looking at the cardlist, but I guess I have to abandon that hope.) > You have not even listed the single detail of how many people you asked. > > Oh, and while we're at it, is it conceivable that there is a skill > factor here that we have not previously considered -- the knowledge to > draft smaller vampires to improve the deck? Hey, check how many smaller vamps are around to draft. Not many. > >There was a LOT of intercept in the set and the !Tor only had access to > >Stealth Ritus for stealth. > > This is useful information. Serious? What a dazzling display of insight. > >The lack of maneuvers made rush a very weak > >strategy and there were no ousting votes. That left bleeding and > >blocking -big minions so few bleed actions with very little boost or > >stealth and nothing to do about it if they got bounced. > > These are arbitrary conclusions drawn from inadequate information > (except the "no damage votes" part). I saw a !Toreador deck breeze > through a !Tremere deck at our prerelease, making good use of Amaranth. So this "I saw a !Tor deck breeze" is not anecdotal then? LOOOL. You are contradicting yourself, and NO logic supports that a !Tor deck could breeze through anything providing the players around the table is at lease near equal eachother in skill. Amaranth? Yeah I guess you could whack some small-cap tremere with a blur - if he don愒 play any manuvears (remember you have none of these). > >Now I know that all Starters have their weaknesses but I hold to the > >opinion that the !Tor were underpowered in the BH Starter Set. Fixing > >all the problems I have outlined would probably have made them too > >powerful but *some* strengthening would have been a very good thing. > > You have no factual basis for this opinion, however. The opinion is based on trial and error. Many scientists use this method, and I惴 sure the WW playtester try too. > >> You will never get the answers until you know enough to ask the right > >> questions. Until you can answer the above questions, you won't ever > >> know enough. Some things you are not going to get to know, and it > >> should be fairly obvious from the above questions. > >> > >> Life is not always fair. > > > >I just don't understand what you're waffling about here. *You* (derek) > >asked the question. You should have the decency to wait for answers > >before assuming they won't be forthcoming (whatever you may think of > >your interlocutor). > > Who's waffling? > > I'm describing the process by which you can gain enough information to > ask the right questions. The only problem here that I can see is that > you don't/didn't realize that YOUR answers to the questions I posed > don't matter. > > It's how the DESIGNERS answered them that matters; and until you know > those answers, all opinions are so much airy speculation. Since the > design team has been pretty shut-mouthed in the past about "why" > questions, I see no reason to believe that you will obtain those > answers; therefore, I do not need to wait. > > >I haven't asked any questions. I expressed an opinion and answered your > >question. > > But YOU can't answer my question. You can find the answer, though. Boys, I leave this discussion to you. It愀 not concrete enough for me to bother to get into. Actually I prefer to discuss the game than to discuss what questions Derek Ray will like me to discuss.

On 22 Nov 2003 03:44:56 -0800, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) scrawled: >salem <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<mc3urvsr8npuq4cvl...@4ax.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] it's more that wizards would have bought the art from the artist, and the contract under which they did might not have let the art's ownership be transferable without artist consent, or somesuch, so WW had to license it. which costs money. and the longer you license for the more it costs. so you make your own, which just has an initial outlay cost, and that's it. [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray expounded: > >I do :P you are the one asking them and then claiming I don't without > >waiting for a response. Well actuallly you were making that claim about > >someone else but you should still have waited for a response. I answered > >a couple of your questions and you started talking about a "Dodge > >Viper"... > > That's because you only have YOUR answers. You don't have the real > answers. The only people who have the real answers are the people who > designed the starters, and they ain't tellin'. > > Until you know the answer to the question "What environment did the > designers and playtesters attempt to balance the starters for?", you > can't move forward effectively. Incorrect. I as a player am saying that I don't think the !Tor deck is properly balanced with the others. If the playtesters were balancing it for something else and did a perfect job them I think they were wrong to do so -or at least wrong to do so at the expense of balancing them for play against each other. (anyway that's rubbish: LSJ has already said that they are supposed to be balanced for play against each other) > None of my questions were irrelevant. All were critical to making an > accurate assessment of whether or not the starters are balanced. > > If the playtesters are better than the people who are complaining, then > it is likely that the people complaining simply do not understand how to > play the decks properly. This is not a flaw in the starters, it is a > flaw in the players. If people of a roughly equal level find one Starter less powerful than the others then it is. If I missed some amazing strategy for the !Tor, please SHARE IT WITH US instead of waffling pointlessly about how it might be balanced if we just understood it better ;P I don't need to be as good as the playtesters; I need to be good enough. If I wasn't someone would have pointed out what I should have done and other people would not have had my problems. I'm not talking about complete newbies here. If people with a decent understanding of the game can't find a way to make these things work as well as the others then they are not properly balanced. If it's not balanced for play at the level it's likely to see then that is a flaw in the playtesting. These are supposed to be STARTER decks -in general I would consider it much less serious for one of them to have some amazing but obscure strategy available to the absolute expert than to be unbalanced for normal people. > If the playtesters are WORSE, then clearly there is the potential for > the starters to be unbalanced, yes. I doubt they were, but the > possibility must be considered. If this is the case then it validates my claim completely. > And there is even a fourth possibility: the complainers are attempting > to play starter decks with a constructed-deck mentality, while the > playtesters were able to treat them as starters... I'm not sure what that means. > Until you know which possibility is true, you cannot move forward. Just address them all. > On the other hand, perhaps new players prefer variety -- four friends > come in and each buy a different starter, learn to play that starter, > and then swap out to learn a new style. I'm all in favour of this. It doesn't preclude balancing them. Furthermore they will find it very frustrating if one deck always wins or loses. > You cannot conclude that it is "best avoided" without knowing additional > information that you have no way of obtaining. You mean something you haven't raised here? > >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily > > But are the starters balanced for new players or veterans? > > Your above paragraph assumes the first, but this statement assumes the > second. See how tangled up you can get without defining your > environment? Well "valuable ooh" cards are valuable to everyone and *usually* immediately interesting to anyone who knows the rules. When it comes to complete newbies it's obvious that erratic play can and will override even quite gross unbalancing. They should be balanced for both groups though. > Different people will have different opinions of what a "valuable ooh" > card is. Perhaps there are equal amounts of "ooh" cards in each deck in > the playtesters' eyes. And here we touch on the skill question again, > which, by the way, we still haven't answered. Perhaps there are. That's really a different issue that doesn't interest me very much. > On the other hand, perhaps "valuable ooh" wasn't even a criteria... It is a criterion. If it's not one that they tried to address then it's one that they should have tried to address. > I guarantee that your statistics are fallacious; you have surely not > asked every single person who won with the !Toreador how they did it, > nor have you interviewed every person who LOST with the !Toreador. You > have not done any sort of skill comparison of the winners and losers, > nor a skill comparison of the players they faced... and as such this is > simply anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to draw valid conclusions > from. I don't consider it worth the effort of a rigorous analisys. The evidence of the sample I do have is unanymous. No one (even you) has seriously disagreed with my claim or presented any evidence to the contrary. If you present some evidence to the contrary then I will be happy to revise my opinions appropriately. Merely saying that my evidence is insufficiently rigorous for your tastes strikes me as rather pointless. > Oh, and while we're at it, is it conceivable that there is a skill > factor here that we have not previously considered -- the knowledge to > draft smaller vampires to improve the deck? That much was obvious. You have to be able to draft them for this to be viable -it should not be necessary. > These are arbitrary conclusions drawn from inadequate information > (except the "no damage votes" part). I saw a !Toreador deck breeze > through a !Tremere deck at our prerelease, making good use of Amaranth. The stake+amaranth combo was very nice but also unlikely -2 amaranth I think- and certainly good against the Tremere. What was the Toreador's strategy? What vampires did they get? > I'm describing the process by which you can gain enough information to > ask the right questions. The only problem here that I can see is that > you don't/didn't realize that YOUR answers to the questions I posed > don't matter. My answers certainly matter. I am expressing my opinion that they are unbalanced. How *I* think they should be balanced is what matters to that. If someone wants to disagree they should present their own criteria for balancing and argue that they are better. Your position is simply nihilistic and unhelpful. > It's how the DESIGNERS answered them that matters; and until you know > those answers, all opinions are so much airy speculation. Since the I don't care what the designers thought they wanted to do (well I do but it's not relevant). I care what they did and what I think they should have done. If there are good reasons to use criteria other than those I use then I would certainly like to know about them. For someone to respond with the criteria that were used and the reasons would be a good and sensible response to such criticism. Saying "oh you don't know what we are doing" is just pointless. I fondly imagine that the design team would like to have balanced the !Tor a bit better against the others but they're certainly not going to get involved in this discussion ;) [it could certainly have been a LOT worse so they must have done a pretty good job -maybe the Gehenna Starters will be perfect ;]

Curevei expounded: > I playtested for a CCG with a small player base. CCG also happened to be power > rare heavy. We ran into a problem that I'm sure is run into often even if it > is usually a minor one and even if it's rarely noticed. The problem was that > we were playing on a different level than the average player. More > specifically, because we were playing on a different level, it became unclear > how to fix cards/strategies while playtesting. If we balanced for our level, > then it would appear unbalanced to the people who didn't have all of the > rares/ultrarares/promos and/or to the people who didn't understand the rules That's interesting. I'm really only talking about the starters though so which cards people have isn't much of an issue (luck in drafting can make a big difference of course) -I don't think there were that many people who didn't understand the rules involved. > I don't think it's possible to try to have playtesters test to the level of > someone else because they wouldn't know when they are supposed to be "smart" > and when not. Of course, ideally, playtesters are 1) better than the masses > and 2) try to educate the masses to close the gap in knowledge and skill. In > practice, doesn't work so well. I can see what you mean but couldn't you get some people who were of an average level to playtest for balance? > On a tangent, it occurs to me Dauntain probably didn't get reprinted because > the !Trem player would be superannoyed to be the !Malk's predator. Could work > around him being in play, but it might be too restrictive. If there's one deck that didn't need any more options it's the !Malk!! > Anyway, I think too much concern is being put into the play merits of the > precons. They really don't see much play as far as I can tell. Then, they > quickly morph when adding cards. One of the major reasons I think different > areas get different results at the prereleases is that they play them under > different rules. Some draft, some don't. Some play with more cards. Some > trade. Etc. That's all true and probably why they weren't more rigorously balanced. I would also rather they spent the time they obviously did on the main set and the !Tor weren't unplayable -nor impossible to win with (with enough luck ;) Words written don't necessarily equate to importance attributed. I'm only discussing it because Derek needed something to argue about and I couldn't possibly leave all the fun to other people ;) > >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily > >checked by looking at the various price lists but I assumed that someone > > I don't think this is being argued much. Palla and Scam are probably as good > as anything if you already owned !Trem stuff. That's ok then :-)

In message <5a3b0aea.0311...@posting.google.com>, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) mumbled something about: >Derek Ray: >> That's because you only have YOUR answers. You don't have the real >> answers. The only people who have the real answers are the people who >> designed the starters, and they ain't tellin'. > >Yeah, most of your "arguments" (if one can call them that) in this >thread is like "They know - you don愒, so shut up!" We seem to >disagree. Face it. Well, Bosco, perhaps that is actually the answer. Disagree all you want, it won't change the facts. >> Until you know the answer to the question "What environment did the >> designers and playtesters attempt to balance the starters for?", you >> can't move forward effectively. > >ALL of my assessments is based on play in a sealed deck enviroment >only. It won愒 matter if you play 1 starter only - 1 starter+3 >boosters - 2 starters or whatever. I don't care about your assessments, since they're based on an inadequate foundation. And it surely WILL matter. For example, what if someone got some maneuver cards such as Quicken Sight into the !Toreador starter? >> If the playtesters are better than the people who are complaining, then >> it is likely that the people complaining simply do not understand how to >> play the decks properly. This is not a flaw in the starters, it is a >> flaw in the players. > >Thanks for the dizz. Why not make the !Tor deck as easy to play as the Oh, Henrik, I'm giving up on you. You just don't bother to read or think, you know, and you take things FAR too personally that were never specifically aimed at you. >other decks then? THAT would be fair to any player in any skill level >in any enviroment or? Why make one deck more "tricky"? Are we >suppossed to give that deck to the best player in our group (swedish >champion Erik T every time we want to play a BH-sealed deck, just to >even things out? I think that would suck. Who says it's not as easy to play as the other decks? Blood Dolls are not an afterthought; there are times when you need to push blood TO the vampire, and times when you need to not use the Doll. I frequently see new players misuse Blood Dolls, often by removing the blood every single time. >> And there is even a fourth possibility: the complainers are attempting >> to play starter decks with a constructed-deck mentality, while the >> playtesters were able to treat them as starters... which isn't a direct >> reflection on skill but IS a factor. > >I assure you most of the people who bother to complain has made their >best effort in playing the decks in the BH set after their best >ability against the other decks. I guess that would force them to use >the sealed deck-mentality or? Especially if they have made more than >one effort. I find that most people have significant difficulty adjusting to a sealed-deck environment. They tend to not understand how to manage resources properly (large vampires), etc., and if they've got the Blood Doll crutch going, they freak out when they don't draw one, even if it's in their deck. Hey, look! That's what most of the complainers are saying! Coincidence? HMMMMMMMM. >> I understand this approach garnered quite a bit of revenue for some >> people who made a "Street Fighter" arcade game; each character required >> a completely different approach to play, and it became quite popular as >> a result. >> >> You cannot conclude that it is "best avoided" without knowing additional >> information that you have no way of obtaining. > >Again, more of this "You don愒 know so shut up and get away from this >newsgroup"-mentality. I惴 not sure you talk for ANYBODY more than >yourself when you make these statements. Well, Henrik, you came out whining and bitching with loaded questions. If you want to discuss the matter, then discuss it, but don't be surprised when people tell you to shut the fuck up when you act like a little whiny fanboy asshole. >> Different people will have different opinions of what a "valuable ooh" >> card is. Perhaps there are equal amounts of "ooh" cards in each deck in >> the playtesters' eyes. And here we touch on the skill question again, >> which, by the way, we still haven't answered. > >If WW would like to know what cards could be added to sell more >starters, they could check http://vtesinla.org/db_prices.asp? to >determine which cards are "ooh-cards" for most players. That list >shows demand. That assumes that WW cares about balancing starters with ooh-cards, something which is presently an unknown. >This "your statistics are fallacious"-stuff is weird. I惴 sure >Timlagor understand that his observations are not statisticly >bullet-proof, but just observations. So, yes, almost everything stated >at this newsgroups are "anecdotal evidence". But I hope you understand >that many "anecdotes" together say something - no smoke without fire THIS is a horrible statement. "no smoke without fire" has been used as the excuse for countless bloody purges across history. Salem witch-hunts are an excellent example. Until you find the fire, the rest is just smoke. >eh? (I also hope that you could be concrete and see that the !Tor deck >is weird just by looking at the cardlist, but I guess I have to >abandon that hope.) I've seen, played, and won with a lot of 'weird' looking decks in my lifetime. I've even posted one here that I'm STILL not sure how it wins, but it tends to. I give absolutely zero credence to whether a deck looks "weird" or not, these days, since I've seen a lot of surprising things. >> You have not even listed the single detail of how many people you asked. >> >> Oh, and while we're at it, is it conceivable that there is a skill >> factor here that we have not previously considered -- the knowledge to >> draft smaller vampires to improve the deck? > >Hey, check how many smaller vamps are around to draft. Not many. So everyone else also had big vampires in their crypts, then, right? Balancing things out, maybe? >> These are arbitrary conclusions drawn from inadequate information >> (except the "no damage votes" part). I saw a !Toreador deck breeze >> through a !Tremere deck at our prerelease, making good use of Amaranth. > >So this "I saw a !Tor deck breeze" is not anecdotal then? LOOOL. You My anecdotal remark serves to just point up that different people and different players will see different things, emphasizing how useless anecdotal information really is. >are contradicting yourself, and NO logic supports that a !Tor deck >could breeze through anything providing the players around the table >is at lease near equal eachother in skill. Amaranth? Yeah I guess you >could whack some small-cap tremere with a blur - if he don愒 play any >manuvears (remember you have none of these). This is just pissing and moaning. I'm sorry you don't have any substance to your arguments, but really, there's no need for pointless yammering like this. Not all the other starters had 20 maneuver cards, you know. >> >Now I know that all Starters have their weaknesses but I hold to the >> >opinion that the !Tor were underpowered in the BH Starter Set. Fixing >> >all the problems I have outlined would probably have made them too >> >powerful but *some* strengthening would have been a very good thing. >> >> You have no factual basis for this opinion, however. > >The opinion is based on trial and error. Many scientists use this >method, and I惴 sure the WW playtester try too. However, your trial and error wasn't the one that mattered. Sorry! We have some lovely departing gifts for you. >> >> You will never get the answers until you know enough to ask the right >> >> questions. Until you can answer the above questions, you won't ever >> >> know enough. Some things you are not going to get to know, and it >> >> should be fairly obvious from the above questions. >> >> >> >> Life is not always fair. >> > >Boys, I leave this discussion to you. It愀 not concrete enough for me >to bother to get into. Actually I prefer to discuss the game than to >discuss what questions Derek Ray will like me to discuss. Hey, check it out; Henrik may have finally gotten a clue. There's no way to concretely discuss the strength of the starters, and certainly no way to say things like "THE !TOREADOR IS DEFINITELY THE WEAKEST"... because we don't have enough information. Gooolleee! Who'da thunked it? [ quoted text not captured ]

Henrik Klippstr?m wrote: > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3FBDF493...@white-wolf.com>... > >>Henrik Klippstr?m wrote: >> >>>WW have a guy (L. Scott Johnson) to answer ALL rules questions on >>>various forums, even the real easy ones, so why not explain stuff like >>>this? >> >>I have. >>For those of you who missed it: One of the goals in designing the >>precons is that they be balanced. As if it needed repeating. > > > Sorry, but I think that is the answer to something like "Is one of > your goals to design balanced precons?" Why so laconic? Please answer > some of my real questions (like why are there 5 Templars and no Blood > Dolls or manuvears/presses in the !Tor starters, and why so much > secrecy about this whole thing, also see my other posts on this > thread). The decks are the way they are as a result of a design process that has as one of its goals the goal of making the decks balanced. There is a large number of decks that are as balanced as one another. Why chose one over the other? Because only one gets printed. This isn't a secret. [ quoted text not captured ]

This is really getting off the original topic, which was Henrik's "why won't the design team answer my whiny question about why the !Toreador starter sucks". In retrospect, I should have asked Henrik "When did you stop beating your wife?" to illustrate the point about why the DT won't answer him, but I felt in the mood to argue. =) In message <MPG.1a295a086...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> >> Until you know the answer to the question "What environment did the >> designers and playtesters attempt to balance the starters for?", you >> can't move forward effectively. > >Incorrect. I as a player am saying that I don't think the !Tor deck is No, absolutely correct. Remember, Tim, I do this for a living. I get PAID to define environments properly prior to asking questions. When you don't define the environment, you get incorrect results. The above statement is a critical part of defining the environment. >properly balanced with the others. If the playtesters were balancing it >for something else and did a perfect job them I think they were wrong to >do so -or at least wrong to do so at the expense of balancing them for >play against each other. (anyway that's rubbish: LSJ has already said >that they are supposed to be balanced for play against each other) OK, let's assume that LSJ means "in a pure starter-only environment", something he hasn't specified. The vast majority of complaints come from a DRAFT environment, though, not a sealed environment, since all the prereleases were drafts, right? And all players were allowed to modify the starter prior to play, even if their prerelease didn't have a draft... Total number of substantive complaints: zero. See what happens when you define the environment properly? Your questions answer themselves. >> None of my questions were irrelevant. All were critical to making an >> accurate assessment of whether or not the starters are balanced. >> >> If the playtesters are better than the people who are complaining, then >> it is likely that the people complaining simply do not understand how to >> play the decks properly. This is not a flaw in the starters, it is a >> flaw in the players. > >If people of a roughly equal level find one Starter less powerful than >the others then it is. If I missed some amazing strategy for the !Tor, This is a fallacy and overlooks the possibility that all those people at that roughly equal level failed to identify the proper way to play it. >please SHARE IT WITH US instead of waffling pointlessly about how it >might be balanced if we just understood it better ;P Since I wasn't part of whatever group playtested the starters, I CAN'T SHARE IT WITH YOU. =) I haven't even looked at the !Toreador decklist yet. Would you like me to? I'm pretty sure I can spot some things. Interestingly, new players would know little to nothing about the game, and as such would not have these problems; they'd be struggling with the mechanics as opposed to the subtle differences between using a Blood Doll and calling a Con. Boon. >I don't need to be as good as the playtesters; I need to be good enough. >If I wasn't someone would have pointed out what I should have done and >other people would not have had my problems. Now we're on a different topic here entirely, whether or not the starters should be shipped with a How To Play Me manual. I don't think THAT is such a bad idea -- a small insert explaining the strengths of the deck, and what players could focus on. But that's completely off the subject. >I'm not talking about complete newbies here. If people with a decent What if the starters are intended to be balanced against each other when played by total newbies? They are called STARTER decks, after all. >understanding of the game can't find a way to make these things work as >well as the others then they are not properly balanced. If it's not Perhaps those people haven't looked hard enough. >balanced for play at the level it's likely to see then that is a flaw in >the playtesting. These are supposed to be STARTER decks -in general I >would consider it much less serious for one of them to have some amazing >but obscure strategy available to the absolute expert than to be >unbalanced for normal people. Perhaps many people cannot get by their Blood Doll crutch. >> If the playtesters are WORSE, then clearly there is the potential for >> the starters to be unbalanced, yes. I doubt they were, but the >> possibility must be considered. > >If this is the case then it validates my claim completely. Of course. Again, I doubt they were, but I cannot completely rule out the possibility, as I do not know. >> And there is even a fourth possibility: the complainers are attempting >> to play starter decks with a constructed-deck mentality, while the >> playtesters were able to treat them as starters... > >I'm not sure what that means. Constructed decks generally have plenty of excess resources to burn in failed actions, failed combats, etc. They plan for failure, plan on being tapped out a lot, and being able to "throw away" actions. They have tons of pool gain built in so that they'll be able to recoup at least SOME of their original cost. Starter decks do not have those resources, either in terms of vampires, cards, pool gain, or actions. Players who fail to adjust their mindset typically misplay starter decks horribly, even though they might normally be among the best players in the world. As a result, those players complain about how terrible the starter decks are, when all they really needed was a mindset change. New players, on the other hand, have no pre-existing mindset, and as such will see a far different perspective on the game. >> Until you know which possibility is true, you cannot move forward. > >Just address them all. This goes back to the initial point I made so long ago about why companies never, ever, EVER answer "why?" questions about the design decisions. Have you noticed how much has been discussed with nothing being resolved so far in this thread? I stand by my original statement, now LONG SINCE proven: It's just a big waste of time to even try. Fortunately, I had time to waste. Attempting to address them all simply wastes more time, as you're seeing above. Producing a big pyramid with myriad outcomes scattered across the bottom demonstrates nothing, as most of those outcomes will be completely contradictory, and until you know which path to follow down the pyramid, you get nowhere. >> On the other hand, perhaps new players prefer variety -- four friends >> come in and each buy a different starter, learn to play that starter, >> and then swap out to learn a new style. > >I'm all in favour of this. It doesn't preclude balancing them. >Furthermore they will find it very frustrating if one deck always wins >or loses. But you don't know that one deck will always win or lose. >> You cannot conclude that it is "best avoided" without knowing additional >> information that you have no way of obtaining. > >You mean something you haven't raised here? Well, so far you're batting 1 for about 10 as far as critical pieces of information that you need to find out; LSJ has only answered one of them, and even THAT lacks certain specific information. >> >I was told that the !Tor lacks "valuable ooh" cards. That is easily >> >> But are the starters balanced for new players or veterans? >> >> Your above paragraph assumes the first, but this statement assumes the >> second. See how tangled up you can get without defining your >> environment? > >Well "valuable ooh" cards are valuable to everyone and *usually* That "usually" is indicative of the whole problem involved with balancing for "ooh" cards to begin with. >immediately interesting to anyone who knows the rules. When it comes to >complete newbies it's obvious that erratic play can and will override >even quite gross unbalancing. They should be balanced for both groups >though. Adding more work exponentially for the playtesters and designers, if it's even possible to reconcile the differences between what new players and veterans want. >> Different people will have different opinions of what a "valuable ooh" >> card is. Perhaps there are equal amounts of "ooh" cards in each deck in >> the playtesters' eyes. And here we touch on the skill question again, >> which, by the way, we still haven't answered. > >Perhaps there are. That's really a different issue that doesn't interest >me very much. But it's critical to the entire process of determining whether or not the !Toreador starter is weaker than the others. Overlooking things that don't look interesting is a common mistake. >> On the other hand, perhaps "valuable ooh" wasn't even a criteria... > >It is a criterion. If it's not one that they tried to address then it's >one that they should have tried to address. In your opinion. Perhaps WW has very good reasons for NOT addressing that criterion, IF they didn't. However, you and I don't know that, only WW does, and that adds YET ANOTHER piece of information that must be determined. >> I guarantee that your statistics are fallacious; you have surely not >> asked every single person who won with the !Toreador how they did it, >> nor have you interviewed every person who LOST with the !Toreador. You >> have not done any sort of skill comparison of the winners and losers, >> nor a skill comparison of the players they faced... and as such this is >> simply anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to draw valid conclusions >> from. > >I don't consider it worth the effort of a rigorous analisys. The Then all your conclusions will be flawed and worthless. >evidence of the sample I do have is unanymous. No one (even you) has >seriously disagreed with my claim or presented any evidence to the >contrary. Fine. I disagree. I am basing my disagreement on two things: 1) You haven't presented ANY evidence for your own argument; merely opinions backed by inadequate testing. 2) You are evincing many of the same reactions and argumentative responses that people I work with do when THEY are trying to defend positions based on inadequate information. Instead of going out and getting adequate information, they (and you) conduct a lot of hand-waving and opinion-making in random directions. The only difference is that at work, I *do* have the information they are missing and can explain it directly to them if they are persistent enough. Here, I do NOT have that information. It is not my problem if you cannot obtain the information you require. >If you present some evidence to the contrary then I will be happy to >revise my opinions appropriately. Merely saying that my evidence is >insufficiently rigorous for your tastes strikes me as rather pointless. Really? Perhaps I just find it hilarious that people spend all their time whining and bitching, instead of being happy that they have new cards for a game which has survived longer than all other games except one, and was even dead for awhile. I don't need to present evidence if you don't have any. That's my point; there's no way to gather evidence except through a rigorous analysis and testing process of the decks themselves, along with full knowledge of the spec under which those decks were designed. Even something as simple as analysing the starters' decklists side-by-side would be a good start... >> Oh, and while we're at it, is it conceivable that there is a skill >> factor here that we have not previously considered -- the knowledge to >> draft smaller vampires to improve the deck? > >That much was obvious. You have to be able to draft them for this to be >viable -it should not be necessary. Again, a side-by-side analysis of the crypts would be good here. >> These are arbitrary conclusions drawn from inadequate information >> (except the "no damage votes" part). I saw a !Toreador deck breeze >> through a !Tremere deck at our prerelease, making good use of Amaranth. > >The stake+amaranth combo was very nice but also unlikely -2 amaranth I >think- and certainly good against the Tremere. What was the Toreador's >strategy? What vampires did they get? I didn't get to see the whole game. What I saw was a full Selena and Reverend Blackwood caught without any Apportation in hand, and erased completely from the game. At the time it happened the !Toreador player had 5 minions, three of which were 7-caps or better. And as I said to Henrik, yes, this is anecdotal information; but it just goes to show that anecdotal information is worthless. There are surely plenty of people out there who do NOT post to the newsgroup who found the !Toreador starter excellent. >> I'm describing the process by which you can gain enough information to >> ask the right questions. The only problem here that I can see is that >> you don't/didn't realize that YOUR answers to the questions I posed >> don't matter. > >My answers certainly matter. I am expressing my opinion that they are >unbalanced. How *I* think they should be balanced is what matters to >that. If someone wants to disagree they should present their own >criteria for balancing and argue that they are better. Your position is >simply nihilistic and unhelpful. No, my position is that you need to have a solid foundation for your opinion to matter anything more than a fart in a windstorm. I think they're balanced, because I want a Dodge Viper. I have now presented equally valid criteria for balancing. >> It's how the DESIGNERS answered them that matters; and until you know >> those answers, all opinions are so much airy speculation. Since the > >I don't care what the designers thought they wanted to do (well I do >but it's not relevant). I care what they did and what I think they It's completely relevant. Again, opinions are only worth about as much as a slab of bacon on a pig farm until they're based on a solid foundation. Until you can build that foundation, the opinion is effectively meaningless and just "talk". >should have done. If there are good reasons to use criteria other than >those I use then I would certainly like to know about them. For someone >to respond with the criteria that were used and the reasons would be a >good and sensible response to such criticism. Saying "oh you don't know >what we are doing" is just pointless. And here it looks like you finally see my point. That's great! But what makes you think *I* know those criteria? (hint: I don't) The difference is, I don't go rushing about waving a wild, inaccurate opinion in the air; I recognize that I don't know the criteria, and keep it to myself for now... perhaps making an effort to find out those criteria. But finding out those criteria comes into the realm of "inquiring into design decisions", and as several people have echoed (atomweaver, among others), THAT is a complete waste of time, so I don't expect to ever find out for sure. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <5a3b0aea.03112...@posting.google.com>, as...@hotmail.com (Henrik Klippstr?m) mumbled something about: >Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pd5trvk34omnp1tkh...@4ax.com>... >> >> It is quite possible that all these assumptions are incorrect, and since >> you are basing it only on your own experience, it is highly likely that >> this is so. > >So WHY is it possible. I have seen the deck. I have seen hundreds of Because you haven't based it on any sort of solid foundation. See previous messages. >other decks. I have played the game since 1994. I can that the deck >needs manuvears/presses and more things to get through a Con. Boon (or >that it needs Blood Dolls). Why are these observations so very very >very wrong? And why is it worth so much time and energy to call me >stupid instead of saying something about my questions? Why the >secrecy? Are WW afraid that I´m gonna steal their playtesting tech and >make my own card game based on that knowledge? Answered in previous messages. Go back and read. >> You are asking the wrong questions. You have not provided yourself a >> secure foundation from which to ask the questions you are attempting to >> ask. > >I cannot have a more secure foundation, because WW will not let me. I >can only base my opinions on my own observations. This is a method of >logic which I prefer to use frequently. And a method which almost invariably leads to incorrect results. Just because someone won't "let" you have a more secure foundation doesn't make it any less insecure. Thanks for playing! >> I am attempting to teach you something -- specifically, that your >> personal experience means next to nothing when it comes to determining >> whether the starters are balanced, and whether the changes you suggest >> should be made. > >Why are my personal experience so very, very bad? Why is it so bad >that I cannot even ask questions? Because it's just YOUR personal experience. When balanced against the 10,000 other personal experiences out there, it means nothing. >> Clearly you are not willing to learn. This is your problem. Until you >> learn to ask the right questions, you will not get answers. > >So, in your opinion, what questions should I ask if not the ones I >want to find answers for? What questions would you ask WW (or anyone >that cares to come with answers) now that you know what I realy want >to get answered? Answered in previous messages. Go back and read. >> >I guess the Starter decks are constructed for >> >> It does not matter what you guess. > >Incorrect. Your lack of tolerance for my opinions are very funny >indeed. That's because your opinions, like all opinions, are meaningless. If you don't understand why the phrase "I guess" is worthless, then this conversation is concluded, as you will just NEVER get it. >> Then start correctly assessing the situation, and stop babbling. > >Then help me assess correctly and stop flaming me. Please? Answered in previous messages. Go back and have a good look at the list of questions I posted; that is a start. >> Life is not always fair. Sometimes you don't get to know things. > >These kind of arguments you can also find among 10-year-olds. Not that >I hang in such crowds alot. Misstated. These sorts of arguments you often find said TO 10-year olds. >> >How can you say that "nobody would be satisfied with the answer"? >> >> Because I've done this for a living for many years. I have that little >> thing known as "real world experience" in a support department, as a >> network administrator, as a QA analyst, and in many other places where I >> have had to deal directly with people who want to always ask "why". I >> can assure you that if you ever start answering "why", nobody is ever >> satisfied, and they simply keep asking new "why" questions. > >About the resume of your experiences I can only say: Yes, I agree that >you seem to have more experience with CCGs than me, even though I have I have all this experience with software companies, by the way, not CCGs. But there is no real difference, certainly not from the "support" perspective and the "why not to answer why". >played since 1994. But thats not a argument for trying to shut me up >without even trying to answer my questions is it? No, its more of an >argument to make me feel foolish and make you feel good with yourself. Actually, it was support for the statement that "nobody would be satisfied after the first question 'why' was answered". How do I know nobody would be satisfied? Well, now you know how I know. >> However, another customer is generally dissatisfied with >> the ANSWER ITSELF that the initial customer received about ...100% of >> the time, because people are different. Sell your product to a wide >> enough audience and you are guaranteed to have 10,000 different opinions >> as to what the product should be. > >Eh? So if I say "I think there should have been 4 Flashes in the !Tor >starter" you mean it would be so many other opinions that you could >not even consider explaining why it isn´t? Because then you´ll be No. If I said "There weren't 4 Flashes in the !Tor starter because of _X_", then many people would immediately rise up and complain about _X_. If I then said "There was _X_ because of _Y_", then many people would complain about _Y_. Eventually I'd get to a letter that you objected to, and you'd complain about it, and we'd have come full circle and accomplished nothing. >flooded with mails with other opinions in the matter? I think not. Try >to be more concrete please. You may think not, but frankly, I've seen it, I have the experience, and it's a fact, Jack. "You think not" ain't gonna fly here. > >> Attempt to respond to all the "why why why" questions, and you get >> nothing done. You waste all your time answering questions. > >I do not agree. You don't have to agree for it to be true. >> Yes, that is a fact. > >So you mean that EVERY question/suggestion/opinion that WW gets about >their games are wrong and could not be learned ANYTHING from? That was >amazingly narrow-minded. This is putting words in my mouth and not worth responding to. >> None of those reasons stand up to the primary one: you don't believe you >> can succeed, because you know that you don't know what you're doing. >> >> If you honestly believed you knew what you were doing, you could obtain >> a loan, overtake the entire market, etc., and you would have done so >> long ago. > >Eh? You astound me. Do you seriously think that it´s enough to BELIEVE >in that you can succeed to get something done? Well I guess that´s the >american way, or at least some religious way. I can shock you with >this _fact_: It´s not enough to believe. Other factors do apply. Many people believe without having the correct foundation for that belief; those people try to start game companies and fail. Some people, however, believe based on the correct foundations; those people succeed, because it IS possible to obtain a loan, etc. All this is irrelevant; the fact that you didn't TRY indicates that you don't believe. >> Instead, you recognize that others are the experts in the field, and not >> you, and as such you don't open a game company; a fair decision, nobody >> can be an expert in everything. But yet you still stand on the >> sidelines throwing pop bottles and think you can do better? Foolish. >> > >I do not throw any bottles. I ask questions. People do every day, and I refer you to your original post. >section. Maybe CCG-department have another way (I surely seem so, I >you work there) I have never worked for a game company. See above. I have, however, worked for companies with FAR more clients than any CCG will ever generate. Believe me, there are reams of justification behind my statements about "never answer 'why'". >> >> If you make a foolish attempt to answer every single question, then you >> >> rapidly become a company that answers questions instead of a company >> >> that gets things done >> > >> >I don´t agree. In discussing things like this with players/customers, >> >> Again, I do this type of thing for a living. You don't have to agree, >> but it's true nevertheless. > >Wow you are sure of yourself aren´t you? Someone else on this forum Damn right I am. I get paid for being right first try, and I was just recently promoted AGAIN ...for being right first try. >warned me for you being true to your first opinions, and I guess that >person was very right. But I can say it again - You being more >experienced with VtES is NEVER an argument for me keeping shut, nor >for WW refusing to answer my questions. I have never referred to my experience with V:TES. However, WW should always refuse to answer your questions about "why????", for myriad reasons stated in other areas. >> >a company could learn much more (= "get things done") than in >> >> No. > >If WW would try, they might like it. And if you really work for them - >hey! I have already made a difference. The next time you playtest a >set for them (if you have such duties? I guess you have) you would >keep my words in mind whether you like it or not. I don't work for White Wolf. Please make an effort to READ what I post? >> Questions about the game and rulebook are important to answer. > >Yes. Some are. All are, really. Rules clarifications, game stuff, etc. -- those are things players need answers to in order to play the game properly. >> Questions about internal design processes are NOT important to answer, >> and are just time-wasters as they generate more useless questions. > >I do not think it would hurt to discuss the game with more players. >You would keep down the amount of threads like this one even more. Well, you think wrong. Have a nice day! >> Yes. Either you waste your time answering all the questions and NOT >> making changes, or you waste your time answering the questions and waste >> more time making the changes. >> Either way you waste a lot of time. Best to just ignore questions. > >Oboy you are conservative! Cute. But dead wrong in any business. I >think sensible and progressive is better. WW is known for being very >sensible and progressive. But I guess those days are gone now or? I can tell from this statement that you are currently a college student. Let me know when you get a job, kid. Answering client questions about internal design processes is a waste of time and generates nothing productive. >> I say a company who's been doing this for longer than you've even been >> playing the game is much more likely to get it right than you EVER will >> be; and judging from some of your responses, I don't think you'll ever >> come close. > >Incorrect. I started playing this game when it first came out, 1994. Correct. White Wolf has been in business since before 1994. During all this time, they have had customers who have asked "why" about design decisions. So they HAVE been doing this for longer than you've been playing. >> Think whatever you want. Understand that you do not have the foundation >> to make an accurate assessment of the situation. Then either make an >> effort to gain that foundation, or shut up. > >I have made an effort to make a good foundation - I have read numerous >threads, Q&As, chat transcripts and so on without any developer giving >any real answer to why the backgrounds had to be changed so >drastically as they was for CE. And I like to quote one of your very >mature and insightful utterances: "Shut up" yourself. Well, if you can't obtain the information to make a good foundation, does that mean you should proceed with your weak foundation anyway? If I can't get the concrete necessary to build a whole foundation for a tower, should I just do half the foundation and build the tower anyway? >> If you don't understand why, then you should begin by answering the >> questions I posed originally. Instead, you have failed to even >> understand why those questions are necessary to answer in the first >> place; this just means that you aren't interested in getting the >> picture, but are instead simply making noise. > >No I do not understand why those questions have anything to do with my >questions. (if you mean "How do the playtesters compare to actual >players? Are the playtesters likely to be better or worse? Will this >have an effect on the results of the testing? Will this have an >effect on what happens when a better or worse player uses the starter? >Do you consider yourself a better or worse player than the >playtesters?) For example, I do not see how the question of if a >playtester is better or worse than an actual player have anyhting to >do with the amount of Templars in one specific starter deck. BUT! if Go back and read. You're completely misstating everything, mostly just to give yourself an excuse to be a whiny little bitch. >WW or you could bother to explain it, I would be very happy. Explain >it. If I understand it, and the other questions, I would gladely go >away and stop taking up your expensive time. You're not even trying, at this point. Figure it out and get back to me -- this is just a laugher now. You aren't thinking, aren't reading, and aren't even making an effort. You fail to acknowledge experience. >> You haven't even come close to determining the full range of opinions on >> the subject, much less generate any sort of foundation to form a useful >> opinion from. All you've done is have an opinion. Big deal. Everyone >> has an opinion. Most people have lots. They mean nothing. > >"Opinions mean nothing"? This coming from a guy that quotes Charles >Darwin at the end of each post? Allow me to smirk! Ever thought about >quoting Josef Stalin or Saddam Hussein instead? Godwin's Law; modern corollary. I win. [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray expounded: > >section. Maybe CCG-department have another way (I surely seem so, I > >you work there) > > I have never worked for a game company. See above. > > I have, however, worked for companies with FAR more clients than any CCG > will ever generate. Believe me, there are reams of justification behind > my statements about "never answer 'why'". That's probably why you have all this experience that you think applies but may very well not. Have you worked for a company that does NOT have far more clients than VtES?

>That's interesting. I'm really only talking about the starters though so >which cards people have isn't much of an issue (luck in drafting can >make a big difference of course) -I don't think there were that many >people who didn't understand the rules involved. Have you played the precons half a dozen times or more? Most of the reasons I gave for why we were playtesting differently than common play wouldn't apply to the precons as you say, but it may be the case that repeated play of the V:TES precons shows increased balance. This itself could be less than useful as you could have these awesomely balanced precons when everyone understands them perfectly but that never happens because nonplaytesters only play them once or twice a lifetime and never understand them perfectly (and never care to). >> I don't think it's possible to try to have playtesters test to the level of >> someone else because they wouldn't know when they are supposed to be >"smart" >> and when not. Of course, ideally, playtesters are 1) better than the >masses >> and 2) try to educate the masses to close the gap in knowledge and skill. >In >> practice, doesn't work so well. > >I can see what you mean but couldn't you get some people who were of an >average level to playtest for balance? And, when they disagree, what do you do as a designer or (for big companies) a developer? Listen to the "smart" playtester or the "average" playtester? Or, what happens when the "average" player realizes that the other playtesters are better? Run a blind playtest where the playtesters don't communicate? That itself limits playtesting by reducing the sharing of ideas and experiences - increases the amount of unproductive duplication of effort while decreasing the amount of time spent on the less interesting, more obscure, suckier, etc.

In message <MPG.1a29c4f1a...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: [ quoted text not captured ] Yes, actually. And we didn't answer "why" then, either, because we didn't have anything that even remotely looked like spare time. We were happy to just get documentation that answered "why" for the REAL questions, much less the fluffy ones. =) [ quoted text not captured ]

Curevei expounded: > Have you played the precons half a dozen times or more? Most of the reasons I > gave for why we were playtesting differently than common play wouldn't apply to > the precons as you say, but it may be the case that repeated play of the V:TES Not that many, no. I don't think it would make very much difference though in this case. I just can't see the !Tor revealing vast hidden depths and nothing new emerging for the others -if anything I would expect the gap to widen. > And, when they disagree, what do you do as a designer or (for big companies) a > developer? Listen to the "smart" playtester or the "average" playtester? Listen to them both and see if try to satisfy the requirements of both. Ultimately it's a judgement call but the extra input could make a big difference. > Or, what happens when the "average" player realizes that the other playtesters > are better? *shrug* THey accept that they don't play as well as the others? This is not likely to be news. Btw I was talking about a group of players of roughly the same ability as everyone else -from what I've seen the average standard seems pretty high anyway.

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<djuurvo10758humbh...@4ax.com>... > This is really getting off the original topic, which was Henrik's "why > won't the design team answer my whiny question about why the !Toreador > starter sucks". > > In retrospect, I should have asked Henrik "When did you stop beating > your wife?" to illustrate the point about why the DT won't answer him, > but I felt in the mood to argue. =) To sum things up on this thread: We have different opinions about alot of stuff, including management of a company, the definition of "fact", if I need a job to have any opinions worth airing and what this newsgroup is about. Simply; we disagree. Now, of course, I go back to beating my wife.

> I win. > > -- Derek Yes, you win. Although I guess we also disagree on the definition of "winning" in this case, and wether or not the point of this newsgroup is to "win". And again, sorry for upsetting you with my stupid questions Derek. I´ll try not to repeat it! :] Yours, /The Loser

> That's because your opinions, like all opinions, are meaningless. Opinion is not meaningless. Opinion of consumers, derived from factual evidence or otherwise, is what ultimately drives sales. To say "opinions are meaningless" is to say that profit is meaningless, another *opinion* which eqates to commercial suicide. n

In message <e72ec49.03112...@posting.google.com>, nood...@iprimus.net.au (noodleboy) mumbled something about: >> That's because your opinions, like all opinions, are meaningless. > >Opinion is not meaningless. Note that you're using the plural here. >Opinion of consumers, derived from factual evidence or otherwise, is >what ultimately drives sales. To say "opinions are meaningless" is to >say that profit is meaningless, another *opinion* which eqates to >commercial suicide. I will clarify then. Opinions taken individually are meaningless. Opinion as a whole is far from meaningless, yes; however, considering USENET to be any more than a fraction of that opinion would be a giggle. Saying "me and my friends stand by this opinion" and attempting to support any sort of position with it is silly on the face of it -- much better to approach the problem from another perspective. In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of opinions? ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of the design team? -- Derek "From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of idiots." - unknown

Derek Ray expounded: > In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single > person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide > maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome > of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of > opinions? ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid > foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of > the design team? As far as I can tell you are the only person who hasn't looked at the decks and still thinks their opinion is worthwhile. Go and look at them. Just because we haven't said here that the !Tor crypt has half as many vampires of capacity less than 6 as any other (!Trem has even more) doesn't mean that I don't know it. As it happens I didn't know the exact figures but I did say that the crypt is bigger than the others. Total crypt capacities: !Tor 84 Others 76, 78, 69. Vampires with cap <8 Tor 6 Others 9, 8, 9 Happy now? I have already pointed out that the only way for the !Tor to get maneuvers was to block using Q Sight. The Malks get twice the maneuvers that !Tor do (from spirit's touch in their case) in the starter. I'm not going to bother with any more statistics here -go and look at the decks. It is true that I hadn't got the statistics to hand but I did know that these were the problems and have already said so -the actual numbers don't matter much. I have only mentioned the motives of the design team in the context of answering your questions. I consider their intentions irrelevant to the discussion. I have said why I think the !Tor deck is the weakest y a significant margin and what i thinkcould have been done better. IMO whathever the designers did to balance them was a flawed process: it doesn't matter what they did or tried to do -I am not satified with the results in this regard. We may agree that it isn't very important and that the !Tor deck wasn't completely unplayable but again that is not relevant to how well balanced they are. LSJ has said that they tried to balance the decks. The !Tor deck is weaker in any likely pre-release format. Go look at the decks. If you want to design an environment they should be tested in then that's fine. It still doesn't matter how they were tested or what the intention was in doing so.

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pt14svsmj742q5s8t...@4ax.com>... > In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single > person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide > maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome > of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of > opinions? Obviously, because no one is interested in doing the tedious quasi-statistical legwork. And by no one, I mean that all of the people that are actually good at *real* statistics are doing something else, and I'm too busy to do the tedious stuff (which is the only thing I'm good for). :P > ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid > foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of > the design team? Now that's just crazy talk. Xian now get back to your "legal counseling"

> Note that you're using the plural here. Yes. > I will clarify then. Opinions taken individually are meaningless. I disagree. One opinion, if professed by a reliable, trustworthy source, has the power to shape the opinions of coutnless others. For example, if LSJ were to post on this newsgroup "Gee lads, we're real sorry but the design team really screwed the pooch. The !Toreador starter blows goats, no mistake." how can that possibly be meaningless? Opinion drives the world, or more acurately, the mob, far more that reliable statistics ever will. > Opinion as a whole is far from meaningless, yes; however, considering > USENET to be any more than a fraction of that opinion would be a giggle. > Saying "me and my friends stand by this opinion" and attempting to > support any sort of position with it is silly on the face of it -- much > better to approach the problem from another perspective. Indeed. But I don't think the original posters [and i really can't be bothered trawling back through all the posts, so please correct me if I'm wrong] were attempting to talk for all VTES players. They simply found one starter unsatisfactory, and wondered why it was so. > In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single > person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide > maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome > of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of > opinions? ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid > foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of > the design team? Probably. I can't say for sure why people haven't done it. I would guess that they can't be bothered. ;) BTW, for what's it's worth, I concur with the opinion of the original posters - that the Toreador starter seems the weakest from my own viewpoint, limited though it may be. Only one opinion of course, for whatever that's worth. Certainly more than nothing, at any rate. noodleboy

noodleboy expounded: > Opinion drives the world, or more acurately, the mob, far more that > reliable statistics ever will. Oooh. Good point. > Indeed. But I don't think the original posters [and i really can't be > bothered trawling back through all the posts, so please correct me if > I'm wrong] were attempting to talk for all VTES players. They simply > found one starter unsatisfactory, and wondered why it was so. Correct ;) > BTW, for what's it's worth, I concur with the opinion of the original > posters - that the Toreador starter seems the weakest from my own > viewpoint, limited though it may be. Only one opinion of course, for > whatever that's worth. > > Certainly more than nothing, at any rate. Welcome to the Bunter/Damnans Entertainment Society!

nood...@iprimus.net.au (noodleboy) wrote in message news:<e72ec49.03112...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] I second that. Mainly due to the lack of blood support and high cap vampires.

In message <MPG.1a2c52072...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single >> person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide >> maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome >> of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of >> opinions? ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid >> foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of >> the design team? > >As far as I can tell you are the only person who hasn't looked at the >decks and still thinks their opinion is worthwhile. That's because I don't have an opinion on whether the !Toreador starter sucks. I think I made an offhanded claim somewhere that it doesn't, just to prove a point, but really, my point has never been whether it sucks or not. I'm inclined to believe that it doesn't, but I haven't had a good look at it, as I mention in NUMEROUS places. The reason I'm so inclined is because I've been around the block a few times with this game, and I cannot count the number of times people said "Card [X] sucks" and were horribly, horribly wrong. Noodleboy is doing a lot of it right now, actually, pissing and moaning because he didn't get any OBT/POT vampires, and claiming that as such, the vamps he DID get suck. This sort of thing falls under the same category; something has to be the worst, and even if it's technically the worst doesn't mean it's significantly worst enough to matter, ...and it's far more likely that it can just be attributed to the hands that were playing it. My point, besides the above, has always been that you were all approaching the issue in -completely- the wrong fashion, and as such any opinions you formed were going to be worth exactly as much as mine, where I believe I said that the !Toreador starter didn't suck because I wanted a Dodge Viper. >Total crypt capacities: !Tor 84 >Others 76, 78, 69. > >Vampires with cap <8 >Tor 6 >Others 9, 8, 9 > >Happy now? Now you're cookin' with gas. We have a deck that can now concretely be assessed, at least with regards to crypt capacity. The !Toreador deck is slightly bigger than the others. In a sealed environment, this can be a weakness if it is not effectively compensated for, perhaps by other cards in the deck. >I have already pointed out that the only way for the !Tor to get >maneuvers was to block using Q Sight. The Malks get twice the maneuvers >that !Tor do (from spirit's touch in their case) in the starter. And what are the likely results of combat if the !Toreador catch you at close range, versus the likely results if they're stuck at long? And then we should compare that to the likely results of all the OTHER decks at long/close, and how they should fare against each other. Perhaps there's a reason it doesn't have 8 Flash. What if every time it catches you at close, you go to torpor, whereas if it's stuck at long, it only gets Thefted for 2 and probably Dodges that? (I'd like to address a side point here. These questions are designed to make you all THINK, something that doesn't happen a whole lot on USENET and, occasionally, this group in particular. I did not playtest the starters. I have no knowledge of the Design Team's intent when creating the starters. As I have said repeatedly, some questions need to be answered before you get an opinion that's worth anything -- it's possible to tell a lot from a decent analysis, but all that you can tell from an offhanded bunch of remarks is that someone has an opinion. Big deal.) >I'm not going to bother with any more statistics here -go and look at >the decks. I think you need to do so first. >I have only mentioned the motives of the design team in the context of >answering your questions. I consider their intentions irrelevant to the >discussion. I have said why I think the !Tor deck is the weakest y a And here you go attempting to ignore a lot of things that matter. >significant margin and what i thinkcould have been done better. IMO IMO, IMO, big deal. Prefacing an offhand remark with "IMO" is not sufficient to turn it from an "O" into a "F", or even a reasonable "C". >LSJ has said that they tried to balance the decks. >The !Tor deck is weaker in any likely pre-release format. Completely unproven at this time. All we know is that the !Toreador deck has a bigger crypt. >Go look at the decks. Why? I'm not the one with something to prove. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <e72ec49.03112...@posting.google.com>, nood...@iprimus.net.au (noodleboy) mumbled something about: >> Note that you're using the plural here. > >Yes. > >> I will clarify then. Opinions taken individually are meaningless. > >I disagree. One opinion, if professed by a reliable, trustworthy >source, has the power to shape the opinions of coutnless others. For >example, if LSJ were to post on this newsgroup "Gee lads, we're real >sorry but the design team really screwed the pooch. The !Toreador >starter blows goats, no mistake." how can that possibly be >meaningless? If LSJ were to say that, it would not be his opinion. It will be a reasoned-out conclusion based on concrete facts and comparisons. Casual opinions are shit. Reasoned conclusions are much better. >Opinion drives the world, or more acurately, the mob, far more that >reliable statistics ever will. And "the mob" routinely makes poor decisions as a result. There is a reason there are no true democracies in the world -- majority opinion is the worst possible means of government, because so few opinions are based on anything worthwhile; they're offhand thoughts which are emotionally biased. >> In this case, through allll this fuss and bother, why hasn't a single >> person sat down and analyzed crypt capacities, cards which provide >> maneuvers, likely outcome of combat at preferred range, likely outcome >> of combat at NON-preferred range, etc., instead of all this flurry of >> opinions? ;) Wouldn't you think that might provide a much more solid >> foundation to argue from than speculating on the intent and motives of >> the design team? > >Probably. I can't say for sure why people haven't done it. I would >guess that they can't be bothered. ;) I'd buy that. ;) Very few people are willing to sit down and have a good, hard look at things, from what I've seen -- but that's been true of this game for a long time. Some people still believe Consanguineous Condemnation is a worthless card, for example. >BTW, for what's it's worth, I concur with the opinion of the original >posters - that the Toreador starter seems the weakest from my own >viewpoint, limited though it may be. Only one opinion of course, for >whatever that's worth. > >Certainly more than nothing, at any rate. I believe I'd be inclined to compare it to the odds of winning the lottery when you buy one ticket. More than zero... technically. I'd also be inclined to extend that comparison (for when you have a bunch of people sharing the same opinion) to the odds of winning the lottery when you buy twenty tickets. ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray expounded: > That's because I don't have an opinion on whether the !Toreador starter > sucks. I think I made an offhanded claim somewhere that it doesn't, > just to prove a point, but really, my point has never been whether it > sucks or not. I'm inclined to believe that it doesn't, but I haven't > had a good look at it, as I mention in NUMEROUS places. Your pig-headedness has not goner unremarked. > The reason I'm so inclined is because I've been around the block a few > times with this game, and I cannot count the number of times people said > "Card [X] sucks" and were horribly, horribly wrong. Noodleboy is doing a > lot of it right now, actually, pissing and moaning because he didn't get > any OBT/POT vampires, and claiming that as such, the vamps he DID get > suck. This sort of thing falls under the same category; something has > to be the worst, and even if it's technically the worst doesn't mean > it's significantly worst enough to matter, ...and it's far more likely > that it can just be attributed to the hands that were playing it. Now you're just being plain stupid. > My point, besides the above, has always been that you were all > approaching the issue in -completely- the wrong fashion, and as such any > opinions you formed were going to be worth exactly as much as mine, > where I believe I said that the !Toreador starter didn't suck because I > wanted a Dodge Viper. here you're being pig-headed about it as well. > Now you're cookin' with gas. We have a deck that can now concretely be > assessed, at least with regards to crypt capacity. The !Toreador deck > is slightly bigger than the others. In a sealed environment, this can > be a weakness if it is not effectively compensated for, perhaps by other > cards in the deck. So presumably at this point we must conclude that your ignorance is entirely deliberate and your opinions are expressed puirely for the purp[oses of provoking argument. > >I have already pointed out that the only way for the !Tor to get > >maneuvers was to block using Q Sight. The Malks get twice the maneuvers > >that !Tor do (from spirit's touch in their case) in the starter. > > And what are the likely results of combat if the !Toreador catch you at > close range, versus the likely results if they're stuck at long? Go look at the decks and perhaps you will find out. > And then we should compare that to the likely results of all the OTHER > decks at long/close, and how they should fare against each other. > > Perhaps there's a reason it doesn't have 8 Flash. What if every time it > catches you at close, you go to torpor, whereas if it's stuck at long, > it only gets Thefted for 2 and probably Dodges that? The hypothesis that the !Tor can send an opposing minion to torpor every time they catch them at close range is positively laughable. It is rather more likely that the !Tre will be able to press and Flame. The !Tre will also probably have about twice as many minions and can boost their bleeds far better -it's as senseless as comparing what a Stealth/Bleed/Vote Arika is going to do to you in combat with what an ineffective weenie-pot deck will -well almost that senseless. > (I'd like to address a side point here. These questions are designed to > make you all THINK, something that doesn't happen a whole lot on USENET > and, occasionally, this group in particular. I did not playtest the > starters. I have no knowledge of the Design Team's intent when creating > the starters. As I have said repeatedly, some questions need to be > answered before you get an opinion that's worth anything -- it's > possible to tell a lot from a decent analysis, but all that you can tell > from an offhanded bunch of remarks is that someone has an opinion. Big > deal.) The questions are still irrelevant. I'm still not designing a playtesting method; I'm talking about the balance of the decks. The first question that needs answering is "what is in the deck". let us know when you have the answer. > >I'm not going to bother with any more statistics here -go and look at > >the decks. > > I think you need to do so first. We all HAVE LOOKED AT THE DECKS. > >LSJ has said that they tried to balance the decks. > >The !Tor deck is weaker in any likely pre-release format. > > Completely unproven at this time. All we know is that the !Toreador > deck has a bigger crypt. All YOU know is that it has a bigger crypt. Everyone else is working from the point of having looked at the deck and knowing what's in it. Just because we haven't explicitly told you all the cards and how we have analysed them does not mean we have not looked at them and thought about them. I told you the crypt was too big ages ago. If you had looked at it you could have seen for yourself without anyoen having to count them up and tell you the numbers. I'm certainly not going to do the same for the whole library.

In message <MPG.1a3951c9d...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.co.uk> mumbled something about: (bunch of crap, Tim failing to read, and accusations of pigheadedness snipped out, since Tim wasn't able to understand what I said OR comprehend the point I was trying to make) >Derek Ray expounded: >> >LSJ has said that they tried to balance the decks. >> >The !Tor deck is weaker in any likely pre-release format. >> >> Completely unproven at this time. All we know is that the !Toreador >> deck has a bigger crypt. > >All YOU know is that it has a bigger crypt. Everyone else is working >from the point of having looked at the deck and knowing what's in it. Then why can't you tell me more about what's in it? >Just because we haven't explicitly told you all the cards and how we >have analysed them does not mean we have not looked at them and thought >about them. Do you not realize how silly you sound here? "Looking at them and thinking about them", as opposed to sitting down and actually analysing them? I must laugh openly at this. >I told you the crypt was too big ages ago. If you had looked at it you But we don't know that it's TOO big or not. We just know it's bigger. >could have seen for yourself without anyoen having to count them up and >tell you the numbers. I'm certainly not going to do the same for the >whole library. Then you're unwilling to do the research to support your assertion. LSJ stated that they tried to balance the decks. Until someone can demonstrate failure of that attempt, the status quo: ie, "the decks are balanced", must stand. You have demonstrated nothing other than your inability to read, and unwillingness to do the research and analysis required... probably from laziness and a tendency to follow the crowd. [ quoted text not captured ]