Quitting Malifaux, the whys and what nexts

For those that don’t know me, my name is And and I’m a host on the gaming/hobby podcast Soulstone Train (soulstonetrain.podbean.com and on iTunes).  Since resigning as a Malifaux henchman I have been asked by numerous people why I’m “quitting” and what I’m going to do next so I thought I’d finally provide some answers.

Here’s a list of the bits that I don’t like about the new edition;

Soulstone system – for me the new system really diminishes the impact that soulstones have on the game and I see that as a negative thing.  Resource management was a big thing for me in m1e and making the difficult decisions of if/when to use a stone really added to the depth of the game.  I feel the new system has been introduced to make things more balanced but has removed a lot of the character that made me want to play the game.

Jokers – in m1e the jokers were the biggest thing that provided the emotional rollercoaster during games.  Everyone has a story about a joker coming out of the deck and it has been a defining part of the hobby.  For me that was a great thing and that added to the suspense of waiting for a card to be flipped.  Now that the impact of a joker has been severely limited, I found myself just not caring as much if one got flipped.  Again, it is another aspect of the resource management side of the game that has been dumbed down.

Pre-measuring – I know I’m in the vast minority on this one but I loved the fact that there was no pre-measuring in m1e.  There are certain stories that all Malifaux players will have, seeing a joker, getting screwed on the extra turn flip and being 1mm out of range (or in) at a game defining moment.  The unknown aspect of the range and the anticipation of trying to work it out added hugely to the emotional rollercoaster of the game.  Yes it makes the game harder to get into but I always just allowed pre-measuring in demos to ease the transition and never had it come up as a barrier to learning.

Character cards – in m1e I used Lady J for 2-3 years solid and even near the end I was finding things that I’d either not tried or hadn’t used in a long time.  In m2e, for me there’s just not enough on the cards to give depth to the characters and add variety to the game.  They also seem to be ignoring the fluff in some cases too (e.g. moving wade in from Santiago to Francisco, fluff wise that makes no sense at all).  During the playtesting I also found a lot of the time that, where someone wanted to know what an ability was, I could describe almost everything as “it’s the same as X spell/ability that your X model has”.  Although there were some variations on a theme in m1e (e.g. shatter an immolating demise), these seem much more widespread in m2e.  Also because of the limit on upgrades, in bigger games it often felt like I was controlling a crew made up of totems (m2e cheap minions have comparible card contents to m1e totems).

Longevity – this was really the final straw that pushed me out of the door.  In early playtesting things were quite interesting as I was using a lot of different crews.  As soon as I settled on one crew for a reasonable number of games (I think it was as early as 4-5 games in that I 1^st noticed it), the lack of variety and synergy between models was very apparent to me.  At that point games started to become very repetitive for me.  Due to the dumbed down rules, simplified characters and general lack of engagement that the game provided, after 3-4 months of playing I was just bored of it.  I have heard a lot of people starting to get to that point only 1 month into the open playtest and think that will increase a lot before the general release.  I honestly don’t believe that there is enough in the game to keep people interested for long and, as soon as new shiny syndrome starts to wear off, there may be a mass exodus of people leaving the game.

Fun – the bottom line is in 4-5 months of playing m2e (discounting the first couple because of novelty value), I’ve just not enjoyed playing.  It’s not been emotionally engaging in the same way as m1e and, because my opponent has been in the same boat, it’s very much felt like going through the motions rather than being something to enjoy.  Even taking it away from m1e and treating it as  completely separate game didn’t make a difference, the character that distinguished it from other games just seems to be gone.

Overall I think they’ve put too much stock in the few loud people involved in the meltdown last summer and have concentrated so much on making it balanced for tournament play that they’ve just sucked the fun right out of it.  A good sign of this was in (I think) the first interview that the Malifools did with Mack and Justin where Mack said he already knew most of the changes that he wanted to make to the game before Wyrd even hired him.  For me, if you’re changing a customer focused product you should first look at demographics and poll your customer base.  I really do feel that they have made the game that Mack wanted to make rather than the game that the players want to play.  I think that they may also be spreading themselves a bit too thin with the amount of games that they are currently developing and Malifaux seems to be suffering because of it.

To me as a businessman, Wyrd’s current approach seems a little short sighted, concentrating on trying to get new players in without first ensuring the retention of a high proportion of the current players.  This may be a reasonable strategy in the short term but I do feel that m2e may lack the longevity to retain some gamers.

In my opinion the game did need some changes (e.g. stopping the endlessly repeating overpower and the stat cards) but the extent of the changes that have been made seems unnecessary.

I’d like to end this entry by just clarifying that these views are my own, a lot of people won’t agree with them and that’s fine.  Different people look for different things in a game, there is no right and wrong, just personal preference.  Please treat you personal preference like a penis, having one is fine but please don’t try and ram it down somebody’s throat (unless they ask of course).

I genuinely hope that things do work out ok for Wyrd, over the past 4 years they have been a pleasure to deal with and the people that work there seem really nice.  I’ll now be moving on to a bunch of other games such as Bushido, D&D and various different board games.  The first steps of that journey will be covered in the upcoming episode 13 of SST (we’re recording early next week).