SOV/C3V Feedback Thread

[quozl]

An offer from the Heroscape Codex:

If anyone from the SoV or C3V would like to discuss how the behind the scenes stuff operates, I'm open to any articles or interviews.

[SuperSamyon]

@Lazy_orang thanks for sharing that information about C3G. Would you mind sharing, with everyone's permission of course, a forum thread with a figure that you felt was successful and a good template of how to do things right? I know those threads are hidden but perhaps one of them could be shared as a good use case and to even just enlighten the rest of the world on your process. I'm sure everyone can learn something from your process since C3G is often used as a standard to strive for.

[Dad_Scaper]

Well, LO, I hope you know I've always been a fan of your customs and your frank feedback. If you ever have a design you want me to look at or you just want me to catch up on what you've done, *please* just send me a poke.

For now, I have to step away from 'Scapers today, though; it has swallowed the entire morning and part of the afternoon.

Busy day on the boards!

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

I wasn't aware that superheroes were on the fringe of cultural consciousness.

I'd say we're doing just fine, thank you. Not that any impression of "deadness" would affect my output or participation in the project one way or another.

No, they're not, not at all, and I (obviously) wasn't insulting C3G with that remark. It's simply that Heroscape is already a fringe and commercially dead game, and official Marvelscape was a fringe spin-off of that, and C3G was a fan-made extension of that fringe offshoot. Considering the layers of obscurity it's had to battle through, that C3G is as big and successful as it is is staggering. C3V has the advantage of being an extension of the 'core' product, and is more popular as a result, and... honestly seems to be coasting on that. Switch places, and C3V would probably be dead by now and C3G... who knows where that would be, but it would probably be pretty massive.

Originally Posted by SuperSamyon

@Lazy_orang thanks for sharing that information about C3G. Would you mind sharing, with everyone's permission of course, a forum thread with a figure that you felt was successful and a good template of how to do things right? I know those threads are hidden but perhaps one of them could be shared as a good use case and to even just enlighten the rest of the world on your process. I'm sure everyone can learn something from your process since C3G is often used as a standard to strive for.

Two things:


1) My name doesn't have an underscore - you're lucky I saw your post regardless.
and

2) Those threads aren't hidden... well, not once they've been released that is. Check any given C3G design released after World's Finest, and you'll be able to see the discussion on it... or at least the discussion after the design's been officially started, there's usually a bit in the various Brainstorming threads before it goes to an actual design thread. Of course, how efficient a design will be is highly variable... to give examples of a couple of my LDs (using those as examples simply because I'm more familiar with them and remember them better), Master Splinter was a bastard to get right, and I had to put him On Hold once to work out what I wanted to do, while Ant-Man (Scott Lang) was an absolute breeze and a delight to work on (I was both lucky and unlucky to land on such an easy one for my first LD ). I'm sure other C3G members could give similar examples of extremely swift, extremely difficult and middle-ground designs.
Just don't look at the Killer Bee. Before my time, but that blasted Bee caused all kinds of trouble... damn that Bee....

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

This never stopped friendly comments on designs threads before SoV, or on the threads of people who already had a following (i.e. Scytale).

I think rather than scapegoating big collaborative projects (that are extending the lifeblood of this site, keeping the game fresh, and keeping people active and energetic in this forum) it's better to be the change you want to see.

When I first joined this site, before the Marvel Master Set even released, one of the first things I did was start churning out DC customs write ups in a personal customs thread. I did some super sloppy copy and paste jobs to put them on cards and posted them up, beaming with pride.

They weren't very good, but that didn't matter then and doesn't really matter to me now. But they also didn't get a heck of a lot of attention.

I could have complained about that. I could've blamed Valhallascape for its juggernaut attention sucking vortex stealing time away from my little customs thread. I could've gotten angry at the official game for marginalizing my work.

But that would've been absurd. So you know what I did? I found other custom makers. I went to see what AllSkulls was doing and Eclipse and I started giving them detailed, thoughtful feedback. And they started doing it for me. And we built a community.

If you really want more interaction on personal customs threads, then interact. Post your thoughts and feelings on other personal customs. And they'll either give as well as they get, or they won't. And if they don't, then maybe they don't deserve the attention you're giving them. And if you don't for them, maybe you don't deserve the attention either.

If you want that section of the community to be more active and energetic, put your energy into it and make it happen. Don't whine for others, who've committed themselves to other things to do it for you.

If it's truly important to you, put those feelings into action. That's how communities are built and maintained. My community building with Allskulls and Eclipse and an increasing number of others evolved into TNT and NM24 and eventually C3G. And now C3G is where I live and it's quite enough for me, thank you.

[Scytale]

Originally Posted by SuperSamyon

This might be the corporate America in me speaking, but I find that emails and forum posts too slow and not conducive to fast production. Perhaps setting up a weekly conference call would be better so you guys can quickly talk through the design? A few words spoken saves minutes from typing lol.

I'd be the first to resign. Being able to work on this when I have time is of primary importance to me. Once it becomes a real job I'm done.

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

Commenting and a degree of recognition =/= actual concerted effort playtesting. All I'm saying is that it feels as though designs posted without a SoV nomination in consideration are shouting into the void these days, whereas if you mention its intention to go to the big leagues and actually 'do something important', only then do people care. Of course that's disparaging, and it wasn't the case before SoV planted its flag and came to dominate the customs landscape.

I admit to being part of the problem, but in my defense that's not my intention. As I noted, VC is my focus since I've stopped making customs. If I see someone is honestly shooting for SoV approval, I try to take time to help them to make their custom as good as it can be and give it the best chance of success. (Admittedly, I do this partly for my own benefit. Dealing with subpar submissions is time-consuming and stressful, so I'd prefer if every submission was induction-worthy.)

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

At C3G it generally takes no more than a month or two (maybe three) between a design thread being posted and it being finalised for release. There are exceptions (we've had some lasting several years if an LD goes AWOL), but those are exceptionally rare. Loads of the units we've been releasing recently (though certainly not all of them) weren't in production when the year started. It doesn't need to to take this long. It feels as though the standard time frame for a C3V design is about equal to the ones that become in-jokes in C3G for how bloody long they took, and those designs only did so because of the amount of time there was no one working on them. That's... kind of ludicrous.

In general comparing C3G to C3V is apples to oranges. It's tempting to think that they were created with the same goals, but they were not. C3G was started to grow upon the fledgling superheroscape that Hasbro abandoned. C3V was started to continue a well-entrenched game with a sizeable fanbase and a strong tournament scene. C3G was created to be an inclusive system made for designers to contribute to the growing game. C3V was created to be a small number of top custom community members combining their skills to enhance the established game with carefully crafted and well-vetted units. C3G has always been about translating favorite characters into Super-playable units, with assurance of balance. C3V has always been about ensuring new units are carefully crafted to fit seamlessly into people's existing collections and game canon, are playable by players of various ages and skill levels in an expansive variety of maps and gamestyles, and can be safely added into tournaments by tournament directors.

There is no C3G equivalent for VC, just like there is no C3V equivalent for Supers (or SoV equivalent either). They have different purposes and, by design, work differently.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by SuperSamyon

@Lazy_orang thanks for sharing that information about C3G. Would you mind sharing, with everyone's permission of course, a forum thread with a figure that you felt was successful and a good template of how to do things right? I know those threads are hidden but perhaps one of them could be shared as a good use case and to even just enlighten the rest of the world on your process. I'm sure everyone can learn something from your process since C3G is often used as a standard to strive for.

All of C3G's completed and released design threads are public and you can read for yourself how the process went from start to finish. Feel free to peruse our forum - they are literally open Books.

Now I'll warn you, we've got some 800+ of them, so you might be reading a while.

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

No, they're not, not at all, and I (obviously) wasn't insulting C3G with that remark. It's simply that Heroscape is already a fringe and commercially dead game, and official Marvelscape was a fringe spin-off of that, and C3G was a fan-made extension of that fringe offshoot. Considering the layers of obscurity it's had to battle through, that C3G is as big and successful as it is is staggering. C3V has the advantage of being an extension of the 'core' product, and is more popular as a result, and... honestly seems to be coasting on that. Switch places, and C3V would probably be dead by now and C3G... who knows where that would be, but it would probably be pretty massive.

I think you're underestimating how freeing and focusing those factors are for C3G and how daunting they can be for C3V.

C3G has the advantage of a very obvious pipeline of figures, extensive established lore and agreed upon character theme to draw from, and yet the freedom to work mostly from our own precedents rather than having to adhere to an official aesthetic to be accepted (we only had 10 "official" figures so of course we were going to make it fully our own!).

C3V on the other hand has to find viable figures in large enough numbers to please a wider community, has to appeal to the competitive circuit in order to stay relevant in the Valhalla loving community, has limited lore that wasn't attached to already released figures to direct their future efforts, yet has extensive precedent and a lot of end users in the community who are fairly precious about it, which makes it harder to blaze their own trail and still be accepted as "official."

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

All of C3G's completed and released design threads are public and you can read for yourself how the process went from start to finish. Feel free to peruse our forum - they are literally open Books.

Now I'll warn you, we've got some 800+ of them, so you might be reading a while.

I think you're underestimating how freeing and focusing those factors are for C3G and how daunting they can be for C3V.

C3G has the advantage of a very obvious pipeline of figures, extensive established lore and agreed upon character theme to draw from, and yet the freedom to work mostly from our own precedents rather than having to adhere to an official aesthetic to be accepted (we only had 10 "official" figures so of course we were going to make it fully our own!).

C3V on the other hand has to find viable figures in large enough numbers to please a wider community, has to appeal to the competitive circuit in order to stay relevant in the Valhalla loving community, has limited lore that wasn't attached to already released figures to direct their future efforts, yet has extensive precedent and a lot of end users in the community who are fairly precious about it, which makes it harder to blaze their own trail and still be accepted as "official."

It honestly staggers me how precious the community for a game billed as 'The Battle for All Time' can be on what they do or don't feel fits...

[IAmBatman]

I get that sentiment, but that sentiment is pretty old and comes from a pretty "official" place in terms of the designers of the game themselves saying that Marvel and Valhalla stuff wasn't designed to be played together. If you aren't even meant to play all the official product together, seems as if the "Battle of All Time" is marketing more than mantra.

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

I get that sentiment, but that sentiment is pretty old and comes from a pretty "official" place in terms of the designers of the game themselves saying that Marvel and Valhalla stuff wasn't designed to be played together. If you aren't even meant to play all the official product together, seems as if the "Battle of All Time" is marketing more than mantra.

But then, I'd argue that the fact that the official game doesn't exist anymore should be used as an advantage. We now have a game, marketed as the Battle of All Time, that already has units from wildly different settings duking it out, and no top-down marketing or company based restrictions on what you can do with it... but a lot of people still choose to be beholden to just create 'what they imagine the official designers might have done'. To me, that screams of a wasted opportunity.

[IAmBatman]

And you have the right to that opinion. The group that has assembled to carry on the project has a vastly different view on that issue, however, and your voice is in the minority. That doesn't mean your voice shouldn't be heard or doesn't have value. But it does mean you probably should expect your voice to be adhered to.

My perspective is this. It depends on your goal. Do you want to seek acceptance of and provide continued use and service for the existing fanbase of the game. Or do you want to create a new thing and create an entirely new fanbase?

I believe the goals of VC to be the former and they make sense as a custom project extending from a well-established official game. Your aesthetics and perspective seem to be a better fit for the latter.

[robbdaman]

Some ideas for units expand from off the wall concepts but with established units being so plentiful adding to them and going along with the generals and background makes it "fit" more. The battle is between them after all, not just everything in the universe. The "All time" just references units from across time as we know.