spikeriley said:

I agree promoting the game when soul cal 4, street fighter 4, and tekken 6 came out would have been the way to go. But sadly FFG was too blind to see this or didnt care enough...one of those

Da_ghetto_gamer said:

Or it was too expensive / cost prohibitive for the return it would generate.

Antigoth said:

If they would have gotten more players and made the game as big as say yu-gi-oh or magic then the return would have been there as well

Do you realize that that was impossible?

Unifiedshoe said:

Do you realize that we were the 3rd best selling card game by the end of 2007?

What happened to that...oh right then game started to go downhill.....really really fast

Da_ghetto_gamer said:

Right - Third best, still not able to hold a candle to Yu-gi or Magic who have constantly held the top 2.

Do you realize how much money FFG threw into UFS last year?

Do you realize how many thousands of dollars worth of product they gave away to try and get people into the game?

Which was followed by two of the best sets the game had seen, but despite all the free product given away, it didn't translate into sales.

They tried advertising, they tried giving away free product.

At the cost of putting a card into a video game, it wasn't going to translate into sales.

The problem was they didn't have stores and new stores willing to carry the product.

How many players were posting on here that they wanted to play UFS, but their store wouldn't carry the game, or their local game shop closed.

There are still players on here, who want to get QFS, but their local shop refused to bring it in.

If shops won't carry the game, all the advertising falls on deaf ears, as there will be no where for the players to acquire the product.

Why doesn't somebody try to get upperdeck to buy the card game. i'm sure there probabbly looking for a new tcg!

I know about all that im just wondering why it worked back then...and things arent working now the sales were there before i mean look at DS2 it complelety sold out...regardless of whether the cards were broken or not

 I have been waiting for this moment for a while, but I knew it would come nonetheless.

All I can say is 'I told you :D'

I told you that this game was going to fail. I told you the optic of making the game only target hardcore players was bad. I told you that the system this very game was based was going to kill the game. That and so many other things.

But first before I get further into my point allow me to present myself. I'm an ancient player of this game, I have been among the very first players who tried to pick it up even despite the fact that I live in France. I used to be an important member of the ancient STG forum, to the point where I organized the second Fan Card Challenge. I liked the game as soon as the game came out seeing it as full of potential and interesting. I even downloaded the demo decks. I even managed to make one store in France convey the game, this is important as I will come back to this point later. So yea, I have been there till the beginning, and what I will remember from this game now that it is officially canceled is this: 'What a waste!'

As you can see my view toward the game is a bit dark, I didn't used to be like that. I, at one time, loved this game too, it was the game that was probably to make me quit Magic and invest fully in it, however very fast I noticed the problem this game had. But in the optimism of the beginning I quickly dismissed those thoughts, thinking the game would get better without a doubt and reverse those errors. I was obviously wrong.

To be clear, this game made a lot of mistakes, and that out of only one thing, the lack of common sense of those who created this game and a less than objective fan base. I will detail those mistakes to you guys, maybe some of you will learn from them, who knows? Anyway, what I will talk about is what I did after I discovered those mistakes.

First I tried to discuss those with the community. But I quickly run into a simple problem. Everyone around me what thinking the game was perfect. They all had a mentality ala 'STG knows what they are doing', it was very hard to convince actually anyone, even with the best arguments. The majority of responses I would got where 'I trust STG' and 'I like it that way'.

Anyway now I will explain what I thinks were the problems of this game:

- Making the game targeted only to hardcore players. Lost a lot of potential players because of that. At the beginning of the game, the game was clearly developed to be as unfriendly to anyone who would start it from the beginning. Most cards by themselves were terrible and unnefective and when they were not bad, they were broken (Yoga Mastery??).

- A continuation of this problem was the system of symbols. The fact that you had to build a deck around only one symbol and the fact that you could not use those symbols in an interactive and modular.This would have attracted more people to the game, by making deckbuilding more interesting and the gameplay more strategic and interactive. For you guys it might have seemed like the perfect systems ever, BUT if you look around you, most games tend to have modular systems, UFS was the only one that did and not, and guess what, it died.

- Another continuation of this problem, no fucking Limited environment! Because of the way the symbols system was made, Limited was utterly impossible unless you broke this very rule. This was a CONSIDERABLE mistake. You guys have no idea how much money the game lost by not supporting limited. It told people at the time that how bad it was as a stance, Magic made so much money thanks to Limited, and you can see it by the popularity the format has among Magic players. The game is shutting down because of lack of money and support, guess what people? Limited could have sold more boosters, which would have WITHOUT a doubt helped the game.

- The design of cards was terrible until James Hata. Design and balance! That's probably one of the biggest reasons the game didn't made it. When you create cards you mostly need to make sure that they create fun situations before being focused on making them do something unique or something powerful or competitive. This game was too focused on creating complicated and unfun cards. The cards lacked Elegance, if you want to understand what it is, check the Magic's Lead designer, Mark Rosewater, articles.

- Now promoting the game through the video games they were portraying. That was the only condition for this game to become big, if you had for example included a card in every Tekken 6 games sold, or every SoulCalibur 4 games. If you didn't had the financial means to do something like that, well you shouldn't have started the damn game in the first place, dommage. IF every fighting games fan heard of that their favorite fighting games were linked to UFS, this game would have become a phenomenon.

This is the core of the problems I detected when I was still in the game, but those were to me so apparent and so bad that I even went to the edge of creating a whole set to show people what they were missing out (and also because I was tired of people telling me that I have just complaining without doing anything productive). FFG did there best to help this game, but the problems came from to much of an ancient roots, back to the time STG runned the game.

In the end, all I can say is that this game had its chance. As I said so many times in the past, this game could have been big, becoming one of the Big Three with Magic, Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh. But hey you were so convinced that the few peoples roaming those forums and calling this game the best one ever for whatever reasons was a good representation of how people actually viewed this game, you were wrong.

Just let the damn game die already and move on,

Good bye UFS, suck to be you!

Mostly good points, but you came up a tad short on one which I will disagree with strongly.

"- A continuation of this problem was the system of symbols. The fact that you had to build a deck around only one symbol and the fact that you could not use those symbols in an interactive and modular.This would have attracted more people to the game, by making deckbuilding more interesting and the gameplay more strategic and interactive. For you guys it might have seemed like the perfect systems ever, BUT if you look around you, most games tend to have modular systems, UFS was the only one that did and not, and guess what, it died."

Define "modular".  UFS gives you some leeway in that you can run decks off multiple resources, but some cards and combinations become more and more difficult to play together.  The thing is, the more you allow decks to combine resources, the more freedom decks have to run "all the best cards" and forsake variety for "top-dog" cards (see also: Yu-Gi-Oh!, the ultimate example of a card game being TOO "modular" with no real limitations on deck construction).

The game you seem to hold above all others - Magic - is similar in that regard.  You're still generally going to be most consistent off a single colour.  Splashing a second colour into your deck means you're less likely to be able to play the splashed cards, and you might occasionally be stuck with the wrong land for the cards you draw.

The difference with UFS is that there aren't 5 elements - there are 12, making it that much more blatant.  I guess the most extreme limitation with regards to resources is that you're stuck with the resources on your selected character card, but that's also why there are so many different characters to choose from, and if you're working off a particular pair or even trio of resources there's usually an appropriate character for your idea somewhere.

So how exactly is any of this a problem?

 Kyo Yagami - Before you finish your little happy dance, let me break down a misconception you have about your "friend" Mark Rosewater.  All in all Magic has done well to survive the many sets and thousands of cards the company has put out.  However you specifically speak to the competitive nature of card development.  And you use Magic as a good example of design and development?  Let's set aside the power nine or the planeswalkers and head directly to the keyword of affinity.  That one complete screwup of a mechanic is what mostly got me out of the game.  The player base was the other contributing factor.  By and large the player base in Magic is too competitive and even friendly tournaments turn into death matches.  I have seen people try to cheat at Friday Night Magic for god sakes.  That is just stupid.  I have never had the same problems while playing UFS.  Not even in major tournaments.  

So I wish you the best with Magic and the best I can hope for is that your cards don't get stolen and your opponent doesn't throw a temper tantrum when that person loses.

Although judging from your temper tantrum the Magic community may be the best place for you. 

dwolf52000 said:

Ahh the blatant sense of superiority UFS players tend to have when it comes to other games... But guess what, Magic is still going really strong despite the Affinity problem and the economy (Zendikar saw among the biggest sales of the history of the game and the most attendance at tournament, despite the economy :D). And more, they have learned from it! And believe it or not, I have met some great people playing the game, of course they are some assholes, and I might be one of them, but hey, it's life, you will always mean people around you, just learn to avoid them.

And about the modularity, I have explained countless of times why the symbol system in UFS is not modular, it is really simple if you put aside your bias about the game. To put it simply, the game give you a LINEAR system to create your deck. You MUST only use cards that have in common a ressource of your choice, even if you can use multiple resources, the combination of those resources must have one of the resources your deck is focused on, and all you are really doing is limiting your option. It is a boring system. In Magic you are NOT limited to one color, the game enable you to play around which color you will run, but running and playing certain lands at the time you want, THIS is a modular system for deck construction, it has gameplay element and still manage to guide deckbuilding, unlike a rule that force you to stick to one resource.

Before you give probably one of the responses I might certainly have already seen, I have played the game too, I have tried to make multiple resource deck, it just didn't work. this game want one to stick around one resource, and it make it very clear.

Someone else presented the problem of people being able to create deck with only 4 attacks and countless foundations. And if I remember that was one of the problems James Hata wanted to address. This game is far from being perfect, but for some reasons most of the people here were totally blind about it. You people will maybe stay blind it but the resource system was also one of those problems.

Oh and btw, in response to the post of Da_Ghetto_Gamer (lol) when I was still in STG forum, I have warned that the only reason the game seemed to go well and every of you was thinking the game was at his top was because the game was still in it phase of beginning, people were attracted to it because it was new, but what was going to happen is soon the game will have to show quality and 'performance' to attract new players or avoid just fading out. Some of the people here might even remember when I posted this post.

One of the things you guys could have done to ensure this quality and performance was to introduce block mechanics . At one point you guys did (Combo is the first, and only example that come into my mind), but guess what. it was too late! There was a reason Magic, and all other card games, used block mechanics since what, forever? But nooo, this game was special, right?

Also there was another REALLY big problem that helped kill this game, NO FLAVOR.

To put it simply, what is the primary reason someone might be attracted to a game? His friend told him about? Nope. He like the franchise the game is carrying? Wrong. Its because the game appeal to him, the only thing that could appeal a kid to buy one of the boosters was seeing the fighting games characters on the boosters, now what if he doesn't know those games, simple he won't buy the boosters.

Now this is linked to another problem, selling the game only in hobby stores (one of the lack of common sense points I was talking about), guess what again, people who goes in hobby stores are NOT avid fighting games fans! But hey I guess you have guessed this one not too long ago :P. The world of Shadowar that was trying to add an IP to the game that could appeal to the audience in hobby stores (a lame IP by the way, horrible character designs, unappealing to nowadays people) was focused on WAR-like real-world setting, guess what again, people who go in hobby stores are attracted to what? FANTASY! Not real world factions, FANTASY! But hey I guess the creation of Shadowar (ohh and horrible name too) was motivated by the background of Warhammer and Games Workshop, but people also don't buy figurines anymore, it is another 'dying' market.

Back on track! Each one of the expansion had NO amount of story, flavor or defining characteristics at all! The name of the expansion could have been randomized that would not have been worse (Fortunes & Glory, seriously...). The only thing that would have counted as flavor was the fan-service, but for someone who don't know the games it was unappealing! It was basically "hey we got another set of X Fighters with Y, Z, and A in it", talk about inspiring. Another aspect of this problem: Not giving characters cards subtitles. Giving subtitles to the different characters cards like "Kyo, the Eternal Flame" or "Iori, Eternal Rival" would have added so much more flavor than "Kyo **" and "Iori ***, I mean seriously, it was so hard to figure this out?

A kind of setting or storyline for each set would have helped the game get closer to being a phenomenon. Or even simpler, a clearer design goal.

You know I might sound like a kind of corpse bird flying around, but you know the truth, this shit make me fucking sad, that is why I am so bitter, it was my fucking child dream to have a card game featuring King of Fighters, this dream is now officially dead. A fucking waste indeed.

"And about the modularity, I have explained countless of times why the symbol system in UFS is not modular, it is really simple if you put aside your bias about the game. To put it simply, the game give you a LINEAR system to create your deck. You MUST only use cards that have in common a ressource of your choice, even if you can use multiple resources, the combination of those resources must have one of the resources your deck is focused on, and all you are really doing is limiting your option. It is a boring system. In Magic you are NOT limited to one color, the game enable you to play around which color you will run, but running and playing certain lands at the time you want, THIS is a modular system for deck construction, it has gameplay element and still manage to guide deckbuilding, unlike a rule that force you to stick to one resource.

Before you give probably one of the responses I might certainly have already seen, I have played the game too, I have tried to make multiple resource deck, it just didn't work. this game want one to stick around one resource, and it make it very clear."

Uh... okay?  I made a handful of pretty good splash-heavy decks, and despite the system, usually when you're "limiting" your options by including cards that double-up on your resources, those cards are fitting your strategy anyway... and the more of those you fit into your deck, the more you can  support cards with only one of the two resources you're chaining in the deck.  My old *Yoshitora* deck easily supported three different Good-only cards and two different Water-only cards.

Just because you tried it and sucked at it, doesn't mean it was a bad system.  Fuck off with your whining about how bad the system was.  It worked, you just sucked too much cock to work it right.

"You know I might sound like a kind of corpse bird flying around, but you know the truth, this shit make me fucking sad, that is why I am so bitter, it was my fucking child dream to have a card game featuring King of Fighters, this dream is now officially dead. A fucking waste indeed."

Wow, you're smart!  The game is definitely officially dead?  Because

1. Jason totally isn't working hard on trying to acquire the game engine and licenses from FFG right now

2. there totally isn't any kind of fan initiative to keep it alive whatsoever

If you hate the game so much then fuck off with your negative bullshit.  GTFO, sir.  GTFO.

HAHAHA As expected. I had the same discussions back then, you are really typical. All I will say at the end about the modularity problem is this: "think about all you sacrificed to be able to run all those resources in your deck", you cannot have multi-symbols decks works without have cards to support it, where in Magic, you do NOT need dual-lands to do multi-colors, no sacrifice just a bonus, in one game it is easy, in the other it is a pain. As I said, you guys are probably going to stay blind about it forever, your angry reaction only show that.

You know, another reason you guys lost so much people, telling people to GTFO without caring, it is one less customers. It makes me laugh when now we all have to GTFO.

Oh and btw good call making Magic steal the idea of Duel decks, for once that you had a great idea, you don't exploit it to the max.

Good luck with your project of reviving the game. In my hope it is a waste of energy.

Bye.