Back from the zoo
I am fresh back from the zoo - no, not playtesting this time, the real zoo. We are season ticket holders, so even for a short afternoon it’s totally worth it. We were headed to the lion’s den, but got stuck when my daughter found the playground much more interesting. In the end we watched other parents, which was just as fun as observing wild life animals.
Of course this prelude is just thought to smooth over the bomb I am about to lay.
In the recent poll I asked whether you wanted to get rid of the Forced March rule and go back to the old rules (which did not penalize stunned characters falling) or to keep the Forced March rule.
No fancy graphics this time - but the weighted result is that 62% of those answering the question are for keeping the Forced March rule.
I decided not to keep the Forced March rule.
…
I can almost hear the outcry now: “What the heck is he thinking - going against what is clearly the will of the Warlord community?”. I am going to tell you.
The Forced March rule solves a single problem: Allowing the Design Team to develop more interesting and more powerful level 4+ characters for a game. In Epic Edition the team felt it was necessary, because in essence there is no extra cost for bringing higher level characters to the front - once they are stunned, it doesn’t matter whether they are level 4, 5 or 6 (or even higher) - they habitually get stunned all the way to the front, where they can be readied easily.
To poll clearly indicates that players do not want that and I fully agree. Am I out of my mind then to decide otherwise?
Not entirely (I did license a “dead” fringe CCG - how sane can I be?). Besides the poll I asked quite a few experienced Warlord players for their qualified opinion on the topic. Some (not all) of them pointed out, that the rule also poses the potential problem of eliminating certain deck styles - Dragon ranching for example.
To me this translates into a negative play experience especially for casual players. If you don’t care too much about winning tournaments, you are proud to be able to play your dragon and you don’t want it being killed automatically by the time it hits the front rank.
That is one important reason, but another was even more important to me: It just didn’t feel right! What kind of lameass reasoning is that?
For me quite a strong one. I pledged to bring the fun back into Warlord, to give it an old school feel again. The Forced March rule significantly changes the game and allows another type of abuse by itself, which the Design Team would have to watch (for example moving opponent characters back to do automatic wounds on them, etc.).
That is not the game I feel comfortable with. I’d rather have powerful meta against such a situation where this occurs than having a standing, abusable rule. Compared to the suspense of whether my opponent thought of packing the correct meta cards in his deck and drew them when he needed them in my book a fixed rule is very, very boring.
Forced March was very limited in its application and even Cerebrul did not find that much use. The Design Team is working out a solution for the problem - meta cards that are playable and help a player to surprise and beat opponents stunning huge characters to the front. At the same time for example you will not see the same 3 hp level 4 characters that were very common in Epic Edition.
We have the luxury to start without any double-bugged sets and we are going to take advantage of that. I want an old school feel that allows old (i.e. pre-EE) players to come back. So I made a decision I am convinced is the right one. I am aware of how you voted and I think I know why you voted the way you did. We are going to offer you solutions for the problem, but it is not going to be the Forced March rule. You’ll see in the base set how it works out.
In the end I hope that you will enjoy the new brand of Warlord just as much as I do.
Tags: Forced March rule, illegal rank falling, Old School Warlord
April 13th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
off to a good ol BALANCED envoirment already eh………..just a recommendation….dont take the AEG path of Warlord
April 14th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Stunning up hordes of 5 level plus dragons is as unfun as Warlord gets. Having to grind through that meatwall (especially with factions ill suited to counter with similar high level characters) is a negative play experience.
[Ed.: I absolutely agree. And it’s not going to be that easy, I promise.]
April 14th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I must say that it shows initiative when the developer of a ‘”dead” fringe’ game goes against the majority opinion of his constituency, an opinion he solicited. Never a staunch supporter of popularly decided design, I see that it leads at times to decisions that are regrettable or difficult to reconcile in the future. In the converse vein, it does allow the players to feel as though they are truly part of the environment. There are valid arguments to be made for either case, and you now walk a fine line.
I caution against asking the opinion of a group that is both the financial support and the ultimate impetus behind the game’s attempted rebirth, and then reversing against that opinion. Your ideas may be able to bring back the former players, but you must not disenfranchise those who are trying to hang with the game. Perhaps you should solicit the ‘qualified opinions’ before posting the poll in the first place, in order to prevent any backlash from such an endeavor.
Remember that your ‘experienced Warlord players’ are ultimately in the minority. Their support and opinions could not steer the game to continuing success in the eyes of the company that first gave it life. Relying heavily upon the same people and ideas that were the references for the first run will likely make the rebirth have the same conclusion.
I genuinely hope that your fix for this specific issue is as effective as you intimate. It will take bold direction and ideas to move this game forward with any hope of success, and I see that as the message that you project. That is why I want you to succeed at this.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Puuh. right to decision! i totally agree with you.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
As a playtester for the 4th edition and an ‘experienced Warlord players’, I applause this decision. It’s now our job, as platester, to find ways to make our game as fun as it’s possible.
We all know that feeling when you have some high level characters in your opponent front rank, felt stun, and now ready to kill your small and pretty characters. We are working on it, don’t worry! =)
April 15th, 2008 at 3:11 am
The largest issue I have with the removal of the forced march rule is that the penalty to the most dangerous characters, whose decks are often built around getting them out, up, and ready, will need to be crafted into your deck. If you fail to build that in, you will fail to deal with those characters. That was often an issue in the environment before the forced march rule, and was a reason for its creation.
I hate having to build a deck just to deal with issues I have with another person’s deck. It leads many players to gravitate towards whatever deck type is dominant without the metagaming, and streamlines what might otherwise be a more diverse environment. If I continuously find I am having issues with a certain type of opponent, instead of including metagame cards in my deck for a specific contingency and slowing down the tempo of my deck, I find it more simple to reconfigure the deck entirely. If a deck type has a greater chance of dealing with issues on a more regular basis, including a specific regular issue, natural evolution of decks will bring it closer to that archtype.
The only metagame cards I have ever been remotely satisfied with were those that had a use other than their primary metagame application. Even something as nominally effective as Back Alley Tavern merited a greater consideration than other metagame cards because of the secondary application inclusive to the card.
A balance could be struck by creating a penalty on characters that ready from a stunned position. A solution of this type would abrogate the massive penalty of the forced march rule, while still imposing some restriction for stunning a character all the way to the front. It would allow you to expect some level of relief from the superior characters in the game if you play well and are lucky, while not requiring you to build a deck to metagame against the largest foes.
The contrast to this idea is twofold.
First, it would affect other deck types that are designed around readying characters. The remedy to that can be crafted into the affected decks, much as surcease against the forced march rule was often crafted into Epic edition dragon ranching decks.
Second, it again puts an unyielding rule into play that could played both to and against. New deck designs could enter play that abuse an unforseen variable. However, the dynamics of play could be enhanced by such an idea.
It is hard to predict. All I know is that I detest the inclusion of metagame cards for specific instances. I have few fond experiences with them to look back upon.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I have my doubts that eliminating the Forced March rule can be handled effectively and fairly, without creating a negative environment. I believe the rule improved the environment for the most part. It IS more fun to have more powerful increased hit point high level characters, instead of the run of the mill 2 hp characters. When you have 2 hp characters only, they are easy to plow through.
If you think about the idea of spending when falling forward, and then stunning when falling forward from a spent position, it only follows logically that you would continue to suffer a penalty for falling forward from a stunned position. If this were an actual situation, if you are being pushed more and more beyond your limits, at some point you are going to be injured. It just seems unrealistic that after being stunned, there would be no further penalties for continuing to do the same thing that just netted you a big penalty (stunning).
I wish you luck in making the game fun and playable without this rule, and yet still have higher level front-line characters in the game that are worth playing.