And interactions with story prizes -- Shadowlands always required something different and more high-impact than any other Clan's reward. So really, it could be fairly summarized as desire to have an antagonist faction that CAN win without causing so much wackiness. And interactions with story prizes -- Shadowlands always required something different and more high-impact than any other Clan's reward. So really, it could be fairly summarized as desire to have an antagonist faction that CAN win without causing so much wackiness. I dont know what kind of insider info you have, but MY insider info had nothing to do with that. The reason you give was the reason they got rid of nonhuman factions like ratling according to my source. "Story Problems" had nothing to do with Shadowlands going away. Wanting to expand the dishonor conditon out of one solitary clan and SLH spokeing the wheels of dishonor was pretty much the sum total of reasons spider came about.

No, it was motivated because of interactions with a mechanically poorly implemented victory condition.

The benefits absolutely do outweigh the drawbacks, as their playerbase put up with it and were even content with their story role for 15+ years, knowing full well that they'd never crush the empire utterly, that their big wins would mean a city is sacked or a hero killed or corrupted rather than an empire conquered.

Alternately be rid of dishonor as a victory condition entirely as its proven to be an overcomplicated mess and revert shadowlands horde to shadowlands horde. Dishonor is a BAD victory conditon, it is one of the BAD mechanics of the game that will either need to be reworked into unrecognizeability from its former form in order to be a workable, fair, victory condition that doesn't just grind games to time regularly vs honor matchups. Shadowlands horde as shadowlands horde has another benefit. They're the ONLY group of players that doesn't mind being actual bad guys doing bad things in the story. You cannot count on a single other factions playerbase not to drop rage poops all over the internet community when their faction is portrayed as bad, wrong, or weak.

Much of that can exist within the current structure of the Spider clan, without the problems of the Shadowlands Hordes had. Depending on how FFG does the clan, they might have both honor/dishonor. I mean, the brother of the Emperor is a Spider. Of course much of this has to do with what honor and dishonor actually do in the new game. Regardless, I could see dishonor as simply a control type of deck, but changed to not be a player elimination method. Again, the only problems shadowlands horde had were with a fundamentally broken victory condition, that up until very very recently, only 1 clan could do well.

Privileging monoclan allows factions to share some overlap as regards themes and ability foci on their cards while discouraging building a deck comprised entirely of the best of each faction.

being honest, more people liked shadowlands as a playable faction pre-spider than like the dishonor victory condition at all. Dishonor has caused more problems in the game than shadowlands ever did. The only problem with old shadowlands was that it was immune to a victory condition that was already difficult to balance, prone to stalemating vs honor and viewed by many as unpleasant to play against. The real question should be "what role should the dishonor victory condition play in the new game.

So as I understand it the plan was to simultaneously weaken the shadowlands by grinding them against the armies of the other clans while keeping the wall fully staffed. It was intended to be a controlled burn that emphasized the threat of the shadowlands to the rest of the empire while weakening the hordes enough to be mopped up by crab armies after the point was made. But then Yori got all undead necromancy and grafted an oni arm to one kid and nailed the other to a standard.

Fun fact, the removal of shadowlands as a faction played a major role in the downfall of the game in my area. We had too many people who got into the game for blood magic and oni.

Feh, Ningen do as a realm influences as well. This explains why the portions of Jigoku that encounter it have more order than a "realm of chaos and entropy" would by a purists sense. Remember that Oni don't have form or much power until they are given a name and linked to ningen do. Likely as jigoku seeps into ningen do from the two festering pits, ningen do inflences jigoku to a more ordered form.

Are we really considering the megagame that led to a significant chunk of one of the largest playerbases accusing AEG of cheating them out of points a rousing success? because I remember a lot of longstanding acrimony over it

Not really, as the basis of my argument is and always has been less player influence. Edit: people make decisions like that because there are so many story opportunities each one doesn't mean much. tourney for winner of a sumo tournament? one of 50+ potential results leading to a blurb in one fiction? 2 major story results a year at best and you wont see that kind of stuff.

Please god no. If lotus taught us anything its that the L5R playerbase is too vested in their personal clans to be counted on to fairly judge and playtest a game with story prizes on the line. In house playtesting only, we don't need more "ToE mantis is completely underpowered and needs buffs" cluttering the design board.

Single people winning a single tournament deciding story is not crazy, the absolute worst results have generally come from broad player votes. Mantis kenku ninja personalities for example. Democratically run settings are the worst. Single voices should be it.

You are certainly welcome to mix your steampunk with L5R, but I will take my time and energy elsewhere should that be the default setting. Steampunk? You mean cliché movies? cliche movie? You mean setting where the kolat win?

As long as they fully support any "themes" they put forth and don't create situations where the personalities are ALMOST enough to build a deck i'll be happy. Three arcs of siege honor tease is enough for me thanks.

Radiation taint was the best taint, players just hated it because it could be used as a story prize weapon. It should go back to radiation taint and just never offer that stuff as a story prize, with staff tainting or not based on the story they want to tell.

FFG is best served by not wasting energy on past information and working to tell a compelling story by emphasizing what they like and allowing the things they dont to just fade into history rather than retconning it. As there will be no setting or story forum nor response by staff, complaints about it will likely go unnoticed and will eventually fade into a handful of grumblers being ignored. Spending time picking through 20 years of history is a waste of their time when they could be polishing amazing plots and story to go along with their new game.

TBH there have been multiple occasions in the time ive been a player of L5R that the playerbase has more than earned any lashing out at that they receive. One of the best aspects of FFG's policy of not responding on the forums will be a gradual deflating of the entitled attitude the L5R playerbase developed regarding the game. They aren't going to respond on the forums, their company is large enough and successful enough that they can fairly easily ignore the kinds of demands the forumgoers regularly put on staff back at AEG. Threats to leave aren't going to mean much as they have a large and dedicated fanbase as a company and I expect more of their sales are going to come from new players than old players.

Don't worry about picking a clan until you see the cards and play a few games. Nothing worse than being disappointed because the old theme of your clan you chose doesn't translate or get support in the card game.

Ok, I' I'll field this one. There are a lot of reasons the base mechanics need reworking, below are just a few. One of the victory conditons, military, reduces your opponents production by an equal amount it advances itself toward victory every time it advances toward victory. No other victory condition does this, military is the overpowered blue control deck of L5R. There has never been a time in the game where one military deck or another was not dominating the top tier of play. The consequence of this is that for any of the other victory conditions to compete as "tier 1" they have to be able to overcome a 25% to 75% reduction in production, which makes them feel like a complete NPE when paired off against lower skilled or lower quality decks. Its the primary reason when honor/dishonor is good its usually deciding the game by turn 4 and winning on 5. It also creates a steamroll effect where it becomes less and less likely that you can turn the tables and recover if you are the first person to lose a province. Exponential resource growth. The gold system is screwed, notice how most of the best decks are the ones with the amazing economy? That contributes hugely toward the creation of the best military decks, which feed point 1 as well. Frankly if your first 2 turns aren't spent doubling your gold value you're not running particularly efficiently and are increasing your chances to lose against people who do. This contributes to the goldscrew/goldflood problem L5R has been trying to resolve since gifts and favors was first printed. The most popular and successful games stick pretty closely to a linear resource growth with a few exceptions and a handful of means to game that system. Examples would be hearthstones power system that increases by 1 per turn, with a temp bonus 1 for going second, magic's 1 land per turn without card effects to adjust it, shadowfists 1 power per feng shui site in play. L5R needs to adopt a linear growth system with exceptional boosts here and there which is going to change the entire costing scheme yet again. Dishonor/Honor working at direct opposition. These two victory conditions when placed in direct opposition often force one deck or the other to go military or go to time in tournament play. One person adjusting a dial up 5, and the other adjusting it down 4, then reversing those adjustments every turn makes for a lengthy game that can often end in a stalemate. The victory conditions need to either be adjusted so that they can face one another more efficiently, or one of them needs to be dropped. Enlightenment. Its a victory condition that is either combotastic and doesn't require much interaction with the opponent, or it doesn't work. I have no suggestions on what to do with it, but ideally their turns won't be spent searching their fate deck, and shuffling, then drawing, and shuffling, and bowing some dudes, and searching for another card, then shuffling, then putting one card into play, declaring one attack in a fashion designed to avoid meaningful direct confrontation, and shuffling, etc etc etc. Many players like the deck type, but many more hate sitting through the turns only to find out their opponent screwed up somewhere and cant win now. Ivory needs purged with fire. Gold pooling is the most egregious offender here, but almost as bad is the design philosophy that everyone pays the same for force regardless of whether or not that clan always goes first vs other clans or not. It isn't a coincidence that low honor military suffered in the ivory arc with the sole exception of mantis, who benefitted amazingly from exponential resource growth and free gold. Thats just a few of the reasons and I'm not particularly big into game design theory, im sure someone who is could tack another half dozen onto that list.

Eh I dont know that its that much of an oddity. Pre-ivory I was in a much smaller area with a smaller playgroup and that about sums up how we managed it. His playgroup just managed to remain healthy through the death spiral of IE.

As long as the mechanical changes do not maintain a format where 1 victory condition reduces the opponents production by 25% every time you advance it we'll probably be good. That's the primary reason Military has been OP for most of the games existence and why when honor/dishonor/enlightenment manage to be good compared to it they were overpowered to the point they were considered NPE.

That just seems so strange to me. Its actually pretty brilliant, think of how many times people would post to the AEG forums regarding something that should/could be handled in an email to customer service expecting an answer. This lays out the expectations clearly from the get-go that you use the channels they put in place to reach the company, rather than posting something somewhere and getting mad because maybe employee X in charge of your issue doesn't spend time on the forums.

There is a HUGE and wide field of possibility between the "every tournament has a story prize" and there are no story prizes. I feel confident a balance could be reached.