Wednesday 18 September 2013

Juxtaposed Against Myself

Just a quick one today.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I've made it pretty clear that other than for special occasions I am not making the transition from Malifaux v1.5 to 2.0 (yes sorry it's one of these posts).

But I have an issue, one of my favourite podcasts, The Malifools, really enjoy v2 (nothing wrong with that) and now the Wyrd Boards have moved properly from 1.5 to 2 (again, nothing wrong, a logical move).

My problem however, is that every so often I am either listening/reading rule discussions and disparities between cards are raised, such as the discussion the other week on the Malifools about Hannah mimicking Nurses and the difference between abilities that say "you must declare a trigger" vs "you must declare a trigger if able".

I am seeing similar things on the boards, such as the differences between the Void Wretches and Nothing Beast and a shared ability they have with different wording, or the standardisation of weapons so Ronin and Punk Zombies can not both have Katanas with different stats.

The issue here is that I distinctly remember both Wyrd and many high profile v2 players quoting that one of the GREAT things about v2 compared to v1.5 is the removal of "those" rules, such as the difference between "within" and "completely within".

Don't get me wrong, I think these things are great, making everything "within" is a great change. The problem is for me, as long as you have the disparities between abilities and how some are usable but others are not because one uses the phrase "if able" is not standardisation.

It feels to me like this is the age old "we'll tell you one thing but do another" and every time I hear/read a discussion about how streamlined and standardised the rules are, while seeing these disparities and/or typos I can't help but feel the v2 end result was not what it should have been and was either a rush job or not as unified and standardised as everyone claims.

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But this is where my real problem begins, I know all of this could be fixed if I just stopped listening to those casts and reading the boards. The issue? For the casts at least, I really don't want to stop listening to them.

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I know, I know, this is one of those emotional reactions that EricJ was talking about, but I just had to put it out there as part of the 'healing process' in the hope that now I can just get over it and stop nit picking at every little detail.

Sorry for being a but if a downer on this Wednesday morning.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

5 comments:

  1. I just want to make if clear, in no way am I complaining about what others are saying or doing, especially my comments about the cast(s) - you know I love you guys,!

    I'm just a little sick of reading people praising Wyrd for removing the nit-picky rules like Attack vs attack, within vs completely within and Wd vs Dg, while these sort if problems are still present in the current version.

    If you're going to do something, do it right. Don't fix that problem but make the same problem in a slightly different form elsewhere and claim it's fixed.

    It's like when Microsoft claimed that Win8 was so great you would never ever get a BSOD, and they were right, but it was because you had different colours instead.

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  2. I think there is a world of difference between core rules issues like the ones that folks have been saying are sorted and individual issues with rules on cards.

    Would a longer playtest have eliminated more of these? I don't think there can be any doubt that it would have, but to think that it would have eliminated them all is pie in the sky thinking, something always gets through.

    I can't think of a miniatures game that doesn't need an FAQ and errata. The aim is surely to reduce the length of those documents and that in M2e seems (at the moment) to have happened. For me, its a much better game with things massively tightened up over 1st Ed. Is it perfect? Seriously doubt it, but then it never will be,

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  3. Take WFB, it's on it's 8th iteration, there are still plenty of inconsistencies within the ruleset. Does it stop it from being an enjoyable game for thousands of people, absoultely not. Do a few people get het up about it being 'unplayable' sadly yes they still do.

    M2E presumably improved upon the language from v1.5, did it get it 100% right, I'd be amazed!

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  4. You guys make for convincing arguments. I think I was just feeling grumpiggy, and Mike, I agree there is a difference between Core rule disparities and disparities between card interactions.

    I think I'm going to write a positive post tomorrow :)

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  5. 'Within' and 'completely within' are both still in the game. You can thank Ophelia for that little gem.

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