Editorial: My Views on the Event Card Drama

[plastiqe]

Well here is my take then.  This just a little case of history repeating itself cause it's exactly like when the original war was gonna start and then it got cancelled on account of whining.  When a player is signed up and geared up and invested in the war, they're allowed certain expectations, one being that things are gonna be fair.  When SG throws an unrevealed event card out in round 2, especially when it's percieved as unfair, it is gonna generate a lot of backlash.  I totally agree that player maturity comes into play here, but if you wanna avoid this situation altogether then stop surprising folks with game changing rules mid-event.

You don't change the rules of the game after you start playing.

edit: ninja'd

[TimerClock14]

EDIT: Removed because I realized i was flaming. Sorry.

[willng3]

I couldn't agree more Sir Valimont, however I can't really relate to the part about your team taking initiative since we work with different people. I also feel that the boycott was completely juvenile as well as stupid. Granted, I did feel that the card(s) in question needed a nerf. But the boycott in it's entirety was unreasonable. Think of the sheer time and effort that SG must have put into those cards. I know that if I were in her shoes right now I'd be about ready to delete the whole forum! But guess what? That's not happening, rather than initiating a ridiculous boycott you guys should have been working with your teams and figuring out a strategy to counter this like team entropy, or if you still didn't like the card then you should have calmly and maturely discussed it with SG herself. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, I am disappointed in myself as well for not trying to calm the situation, rather than fueling the fire. If it could be done, every member that was part of that boycott should get -1 karma. As feeble-sounding as it is, it happens to be the most appropriate punishment for you all, if it could be done.

*phew* now that I'm done venting, I should probably start working with my team to figure out what we should do next. It would probably be best for you all to do the same.

Let's try to avoid a flame war please.  You are perfectly able to make an argument without resorting to name calling of this sort. 
I myself am on the fence about this so I honestly can't add any type of opinion to this discussion.

[TimerClock14]

Let's try to avoid a flame war please.  You are perfectly able to make an argument without resorting to name calling of this sort. 
I myself am on the fence about this so I honestly can't add any type of opinion to this discussion.

I'm sorry I had no intention of starting a flame war and/or flaming and realized just exactly what i was doing after posting it.

[Sir Valimont]

When a player is signed up and geared up and invested in the war, they're allowed certain expectations, one being that things are gonna be fair.

Well plastiqe I think this is exactly the crux of the problem. A lot of players felt the event card was "unfair."

Frankly, they are wrong. The card is not unfair at all. Maybe it's unbalanced. That's not the same thing as unfair.

If a game mechanic is poor, it is not just cause for breaking the rules. And boycotting an event card en masse is definitely breaking the rules. People don't seem to realize that playing fair is more important than winning. Playing fair includes accepting game events that don't favor you, even if you feel they are unbalanced. Maybe sometimes there are avenues for changing the game event while the game is underway -- but the obvious appropriate way to do that would be through discussion with ScaredGirl, not rebellion.

[asymmetry]

(...)
On team Entropy we took the news of the new round by saying "wow" and then immediately "how should we strategize about this." We thought about how this would change our opponents' moves, how it would change our salvages, etc.
(...)
Grow up, community. Grow up.

That's exactly how light was supposed to react in the current and latter rounds too, it was not that much event-breaking... it was shocking at first sight, I admit it, but we had pretty unfortunate matchups (just like team  ) in R1, and did we, team Light, moan all over the place? Nope.
Random advantages are random. Event cards are...well, were just another form of them. Thank you community, for making the war a little less fun.

I'm not mad at anyone, just rather dissapointed.

[7wavemaster]

What it think is that if ALL the teams think it's unfair then just all agree not to use those element based event cards.

[Dragoon1140]

First of all, people are taking this situation way too seriously.   

Ignoring everything else, when is it against the rules to not use all of the advantages available to your team?  If I decided to not use the three upgraded cards every round available to me for the rest of the war, would that be breaking any rules?  I'm just confused on some of the points made here.

[Sir Valimont]

First of all, people are taking this situation way too seriously.   

Ignoring everything else, when is it against the rules to not use all of the advantages available to your team?  If I decided to not use the three upgraded cards every round available to me for the rest of the war, would that be breaking any rules?  I'm just confused on some of the points made here.

I think this is a good point to raise because a lot of people are unclear about it.

As in your example, choosing not to use the three upgraded cards every round would be completely legal; that's your choice and you are accepting both options, then picking one. Nothing wrong with that.

When does "not choosing something" become illegal? Here's the answer:

Let's start with a hypothetical. Let's pretend that the event card had said that all Light cards for the round had to be upgraded. (Obviously it would never say that for several reasons but let's just say it did).

In this case, the community would have been equally outraged and the same actions taken. However, those actions would now actually be against the rules (because not using upped cards goes against what the event card says).

How is this hypothetical situation different from what really happened? Substantively, it is identical, except for the technicality of the rule. So when players interpret this situation as a giving up of an option to use upped cards, that's not really an accurate view; they wouldn't have been building their decks individually and taking the option of using unupped cards for specific reasons (e.g. I don't have the upped card / I prefer the unupped version's casting cost). Actually what they would have been doing was to remove the option of using upped cards altogether. The end result is the same thing as choosing not to, but the modus operandi was actually to ignore the event card. In general, ignoring event cards is of course against the rules.

In other words, it's basically a coincidence that this particular event card gave an optional bonus rather than a required one. So, ignoring the event card (which is against the rules) happened to coincide with a legal version of play which would be to use the event card but choose an option with the same result (no upped cards).

That fact doesn't change the illegality of ignoring the event card.

[Malduk]

"If it was illegal, it would be illegal, but since its not illegal, its illegal." 
Can you stop with the nonsense and pointing fingers? Over several threads, people stated their opinion on the matter. Its not a couple of people, its not some vocal group of people, its a damn huge majority that are supposed to be in this event for several weeks/months to come.
If so many people that are involved in the war are against it, if SG scrapped the idea, if people are trying to come up with a solution everybody will be happy with, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Force us to enjoy or send us in jail?

[Korugar]

Hmm...where's the "Like" button...?

[willng3]

Hmm...where's the "Like" button...?

http://www.facebook.com/