Jinteki.net Hot Takez
Not that many, and they're only lukewarm actually.
Jinteki.net (affectionally referred to as “Jnet”) is where I do a lot of my Netrunnering. It’s convenient, I don’t have to sleeve any cards up, I can switch decks really fast, and even at odd hours of the night there are opponents from all over the world. I donate, and you should too if you use it and can afford it, but it’s free! That said, today I’m going to highlight stuff that I would love to one day see out of Jnet or an equivalent community project.
1. Consistent User Accounts
I’ll be honest: I hate that we can “smurf” so freely on Jnet. It means that if someone has been griefing/trolling/being toxic, I can’t really do anything to properly block them as they can just make a new account. It’s also hard to implement any kind of reputation system (like the currently existing % games completed) when anyone can just go and make a new profile. I assume the Jnet devs can block IPs, but like, it’s 2023 and everyone has a VPN. Maybe there are other tricks the admins/mods can do, but it’s not an awesome look for the game when this happens. Some people don’t even openly grief, they just slooooooooow play joke games which have just the merest veneer of plausible deniability. Jnet is often my free time and these people ruin it.
A different kind of Hostile Takeover.
2. ELO
The Jnet casual lobby… is not. You might sit down vs. a World Champion at any time (and sometimes not even know it) and get absolutely wrecked because you just wanted to take your Akiko Nisei fun deck for a spin. The fact that the casual lobby is by default extremely competitive probably isn’t a great experience for newer players who just want to slowly get better. And yes, losing is a good way to get better… if you are getting coaching/feedback. Showing up to get crushed by TotallyNotPinselHaha420 and qtm_flaflav and their ilk 40 times in a row doesn’t make a new player want to stick around a whole lot. Implementing an ELO lobby with ELO matching would solve this to some degree.
3. Alt Art management on a per deck basis.
Leave me alone with my hot takes. They are great.
4. Tournament Testing Room with Enforced Time Limit
When the time runs out, the game ends after the next turn by the inactive player and the winner is based on Agenda points. We can even implement a “pace of play” timer that dings if you take more than 1 min. on a click or changing the game-state after pressing the “Indicate Action” button.
OK, that’s enough jnet hot takes for now. Maybe more in the future if I’m out of ideas for content.
Where Are We After Worlds?
My content this week is late and I will probably be on hiatus for a couple of weeks as I am focusing on testing for Sovereign of Subways.
The author has strange ideas of what being the king of all public transit entails.
Apologies to readers who expect discipline and consistency. Anyhow, let’s see what my impressions have been recently.
I was expecting to see one or two runner decks that did something really cool and new (and powerful) at Worlds. With the exception of a few unexpected innovations (such as Lago Paranoa Shelter in Mulch, Mining Accident in 419 or triple Deep Dive in Sable) runner decks were pretty “regular”. Corps on the other hand brought forth a bunch of innovations all of which attack from oblique angles to each other.
- NEH Asset Kill. Basically, you spam a bunch of assets, roughly 30% of which are tag traps, which makes the runner not want to check assets. From here, you kill them with a combination of Reaper Functions, SIU+Gaslights->Mindscaping+EotL, backed with False Leads. If they are not running, start advancing a naked Bellona to keep them poor and activate Oppo. If they still don’t run it, score it. I dislike this type of play pattern but have been testing it on Jnet (and playing poorly, apologies to my opponents) because I want to know how it operates for when I inevitably have to face it.
- Ultra-fast and consistent PD. These decks are just really, really fast and consistent. Even runner decks built to contest early can struggle because Gatekeeper is a really nasty early facecheck.
- Ob. Most of them try to kill you. They can MAD you with enough tags that even your tech doesn’t matter. Some try and score out, and/or Angelique you. One of the major difficulties of playing against this (unlike PD) is trying to figure out what in the nine hells they are actually up to. Guess wrong? sad_trombone.wav.
- Punitive Counterstrike is a Fun and Fair Card.
- Of course, you can also just play against Weyland glacier with Clearinghouse like our World champ.
- And hey, there’s always Outfit.
I’ve had even more trouble than usual as runner recently because I have found that the Corp places pretty extreme pressure on both click and credit economy from the getgo, and the Corp decks from Worlds grant more win % margin than the runner decks.
Furthermore, Corps keep the pressure on throughout the game and can recover from even things like Diversion of Funds pretty rapidly (Too Big to Fail, Regolith Mining License, and Your Digital Life can create huge credit swings from near-0). That means you can’t really slow their game plan down for more than a turn by forcing ICE rezzes (which is difficult anyway if you don’t have multi-access down). Many games I play have roughly the following structure:
1. Corp ICES up or sets up a few early assets. Runner builds a bit of econ and installs a thing.
2. Corp sets up a remote and threatens a score. Runner either contests and is left with 0 tempo or allows the score.
3. Corp recovers or pulls ahead and either deploys more ICE or uses some type of mid-game operation to disrupt the runner.
4. Runner does a bunch of irrelevant digging and/or installing.
5. Corp attempt to score or combo out. They can usually manage.
Games I win have been mainly from lucky agenda snags from centrals on blind cheap runs early. Basically, I feel like I need to get pretty lucky to win. It’s pretty obvious from watching other players my heuristics on the runner-side are still suboptimal. I often install things a bit too early (or unnecessarily) and it robs me of necessary tempo for a credible threat. Credit pool > board presence in a lot of matchups.
Anyhow, that’s all I got for this week. Hopefully I figure out something before SoS.