lessons from the past?

[ding73ding]

This may again be to my benefit more than yours, but who knows...

Are there lessons to be learned from WK's past?

Sept 3, 2009 18:41:12 GMT -5 lord_denton said:

Thats not the point. They are bored with the bones they have been thrown because they are all chewed up over the years. Not even to mention the last 5 releases are quiet un-comparable to the sets released in the first two years (2004, I believe).

Is there a set-by-set review/critique of all 13 sets from Spanish Main to Savage Shores? Why did Lord D said the early sets were better than the later sets (is that what he said?)?

Maybe we could learn what factors were working, to make the game better and to grow the fan community. And painful lessons: did the game became stale and repetitive during the later sets? Or the new and odd ships mess up the game?

Somehow I get the impression Pirates were among the weaker properties of WK (compared to SWPM and Heroclix).

Who wants to give a newb a history lesson?

[marhawkman]

1: ships with a speed higher than S-S should cost more because of it.

2: having cannon that stink isn't necessarily bad. It just means it's not a gunship.

3: having 10 factions isn't a bad thing. Having unsupported factions is very bad.

[vladsimpaler]

Yes there are some very important lessons to be learned.

Spanish Main-The finest of all sets in my opinion, had tons of unique crew and abilities. However there were problems with extra actions, most notably from Blackheart

Crimson Coast-Power creep begins here. Ships get faster, more chances for extra actions

Revolution-Game hits rock bottom as far as I'm concerned; introduces broken mechanics like the Firepot specialist and broken ships like the Banshee's Cry. The game never fully recovers and this is the last set with power creep.
----
Barbary Coast- Wouldn't you know it, ships get even faster! However abilities are toned down and so are cannon rolls. Now from now on Pirates will have slower ships, and will be on a power decrease. Island ranges are extended from I believe 2L to 3L.

South China Seas- Not exactly a spectacular set but the Jade Rebellion is the best of the one-off factions because it got some really good crew. Most people didn't actually like the set when it first came out.
----
Davy Jones' Curse- Ships get slower, stuff is less powerful for the most part.

Mysterious Islands- Ships get slower, Mercenaries just stink because they can't gold run as they can't dock at their HI. One of the low points of the game.

Frozen North- See DJC

Ocean's Edge- Another low point of the game, but has a few powerful and fast ships. However the game sinks even lower...

PotC- If Rev was a low point of the game for being OP, this set goes even lower for just being a lame set. No factions but England or Pirates, and they both get stuff they shouldn't have as it makes the factions too powerful(Endeavour and Mercer for England, Tia Dalma for Pirates)

Rise of the Fiends- The game is rebranded. It's all downhill from here. Nothing notable except for a few ships and crew.

Fire and Steel- Includes some powerful stuff like Mycron. Note that the English never get shafted, ever. They have to get something good.

Savage Shores- A small but good set. Has a lot of fun stuff, but is still haunted by rebranding.


So what can we learn? Pretty much everything after SCS went sort of downhill for me as I'm not too interested in Fantasy.

The other problem was power. In a response to Rev, the designers swung the pendulum pretty darn hard towards underpowered stuff.

Another lesson? Don't swing the pendulum hard, look at and address the problems and deal with them.

[woelf]

Sept 4, 2009 9:43:56 GMT -5 ding73ding said:

Sept 3, 2009 18:41:12 GMT -5 lord_denton said:

Thats not the point. They are bored with the bones they have been thrown because they are all chewed up over the years. Not even to mention the last 5 releases are quiet un-comparable to the sets released in the first two years (2004, I believe).

Is there a set-by-set review/critique of all 13 sets from Spanish Main to Savage Shores? Why did Lord D said the early sets were better than the later sets (is that what he said?)?

Comments like that are almost always a reference to the select few ships in the Revolution set (and to a lesser extent Crimson Coast) which set the bar for speed and power way too high.

It's not that everything that came out later was bad, it's just that it was rare for anything new to appear that was as good as or better than the uber ships in those two early sets. Granted, there were a few stinkers in between, but most was still pretty good.

Somehow I get the impression Pirates were among the weaker properties of WK (compared to SWPM and Heroclix).

HeroClix and (while they were still active) Mage Knight and Mechwarrior were always the flagship properties of WK.

Pirates was originally meant as nothing more than a smaller side gameline like Crimson Skies, Shadowrun, Raceday, etc., and the only thing that elevated it to a "core" gameline was the fact that it was so successful. It was a lot cheaper to produce than any of the Clix games, which gave it a much greater return on the investment.

The fact that it was able to cross over from being found only in gaming stores to being available at mass-market stores like Wal-Mart or Target is a good indicator of just how well it really did. Another indicator is the fact that they kept it going right up until the bitter end, and even had at least one other set (Return to Savage Shores) ready to go to the printers.


SWPM was mostly just an also-ran that took the basic design of pirates (specifically, the buildable ships) and slapped on a big-name license. The game itself was fairly mediocre, and had it not been for the Star Wars name it would have quickly gone the way of Rocketmen.

[lord_denton]

The first 3 sets really put the bar to high. If the game continued as it was, I expect that it would have been completely unplayable, as every ship in the game could move across the entire board in a few moves.

So, they did a basic about-face, and toned it down, usually the complete opposite of other games (older ships become more useless).

I think they were coming out of this with SS, as the basic move was about S+S, a nice compromise between the later sets L speed and the older sets S+L speed.

I think I'd like to see another sets like Savage Shores.

[marhawkman]

Yeah, really. the really old sets had several relatively cheap ship with either LL or SSS movement. for balance ti's really better to only have ship move that fast because of an ability. Like Trepassey(PotC), it can move SSL, but only if it has no cargo. (IE no crew or treasure)

[qekocateluj]

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