Still arbitrarily favours collectors over everybody else. Also, still boring.

[Josh] This was originally written as a counterweight to the Researchers having a safe haven, at a time when nobody wanted to be a Collector. As it stands, Collectors are still outnumbered, so the die roll won’t be entirely in their favour.

This all assumes that the researchers are working together, which they currently aren’t (to the best of my knowledge). If the researchers coordinated to disperse through public places then yes, it would be a more even mechanic, but as it stands collectors can easily cover locations where researchers (or outsiders) are standing to significantly tilt the odds on their favour. Restricting the roll to occupied public places only exacerbates that tendency.

My second objection is the more significant for me, though, which is that this isn’t an interesting mechanic as it stands, and I’d rather see approaches to reform it entirely than marginal tinkering

And again, it’s important to restate that a collector is currently winning by a wide margin. Pro-collector proposals are inherently anti-competitive.

It’s not that easy for Collectors to block non-Collectors, when the die roll waits for 16 hours of non-response before happening. I’m not sure which faction is helped more by increasing the rate of Artefact drops, really.

It’s much easier for Collectors to secure an ideal result than it is for anybody else. And it feels like the players are pretty certain who benefits - both of the Collectors are FOR on this, while the Researchers with EVCs are AGAINST and DEF, respectively.