Out of Time

Hello everybody, sorry for the lack of an update today. Monday I'll return with card layout comparisons and opinions. It formulates right now on my hard drive, so the gestation period culminating to Monday's post should be fruitful (in layman's terms, it will kick ass).

CCG Combat and Simplicity

Welcome back dear reader. Today I want to cover not only Combat in a bit more depth, but a few words on combat simplicity and its impact on a game.

CCG Combat and Simplicity

So with the awful definition of avatars comparing stats, let’s take a basic example of how most combat is dealt with:

Joe Bob has 2 strength and 3 defense

Bubba Gump has 5 strength and 1 defense

Now based on these figures, let’s see how different games might handle it:

In Magic, both characters are dead because without any other cards affecting the characters, nor any traits that lets one deal damage first (ie, First Strike).

In VS, both characters would be “Stunned” (that is to say, tapped and then turned upside down). This represents characters that are no longer in play. You also lose life points (called Endurance) equal to the amount of Breakthrough (ie, Trample) damage. For example, Bubba did 2 Breakthrough damage, because Joe Bob’s defense is 3 and Bubba’s power is 5.

In the defunct Doom Trooper CCG, both characters would get a Wound. After the second wound counter is placed, the character dies.

So what does this tell us? One, that I believe a two-stat system is the simplest solution. For example, let’s take a look at this card:

Now, allow me to say here: Goddamn that’s a lot of stats, numbers, abilities, and symbols. There are no less than nine different properties for this character, not counting her abilities!

Now this card comes from the Allegiance: War of Factions CCG, sort of like a moderately tough to learn RPG made into a pretty damn complex card game. Now I’ve not played Allegiance, so I’m not dishing the game, but what I do have issues with is its awful layout and lack of any sort of explanation.

For example: I can see that 3 is this character’s attack value. At least, I think it is, based on the swords behind the graphic. But…what in the hell is the rest of this? What is that weird L symbol that activates the ability? I’m guessing this is their tap symbol. I’ll give them that.

Allow me to show you another card from their upcoming expansion. Just when you thought 9 different stats were too many…

Okay, now this a bit better layout-wise, in that I can definitely see the attack and defense of the character. But damn. The numbers, color-coded, the symbols in the bottom left and bottom right corners (complete with keyword next to them)…its ridiculous. There is a lesson to be learned here.

That lesson, that secret to combat is simplicity. This game lacks it. When you have Joe Bob as a 2/3, and Bubba Gump as a 5/1, you immediately began to compare those stats and can instantly do the math in your head. When I look at an Allegiance card, my eyes glaze over. There is just so much information there. Talk about a newbie killer…

Here’s another simplicity-is-best factoid: When you have new mechanics, such as “Sabotage” on the latter card I have here, for the love of God, Explain them on the card. If you do not, you alienate new players and old ones alike.

This is a rule (ie, explaining mechanics) that Magic adopted a long time ago, yet I find myself hard pressed to find it anywhere else. VS. System is finally adapting something similar in terms of their new Concealement mechanic, but in older sets they have not. This is a mistake. Card games need to be simple with splashes of strategic complexity, not forcing the player to run around the most recent rulebook looking up the latest mechanic that a player may never see again.

Case in point:

Any idea what Cosmic is? What it does, how it works, and did you know it was a counter? Yeah, me neither when I first saw it. Here’s how that card should read:

“Cosmic (This comes into play with a Cosmic counter. While this has one, it has the following ability. If stunned, this character loses its Cosmic counter.): Activate, remove Strange Visitor from the game..”

Etc. Now does it make a bit more sense? I thought so.

CCG Combat Design

Well, to kick things off, Gizoogle is funny as shit. Or would that be shizzle?

Anyway, I would like to welcome you to another topic on card game design: Combat

Combat occurs in virtually every collectable card game ever made. Sure there are plenty of card games that are based around locations and plots and situations, but all of them (that I can think of anyway, or have read about) feature character or avatar-based combat.

Combat can generally be broken down to its barest bones by the following: Combat is when two card-based avatars compare stats. Based on whomever is favored, the loser is then discarded or suffers some ill effect.

God, that was a lame definition.

The point is, whether you’re dueling with superheroes or space machines, combat defines how most of your game will be determined, as a huge chunk of the gameplay itself is just combat. Now combat can be determined as to who “wins” and who “loses”, but other games take a different approach. Here is how some games use combat:

– In Bang! you are represented by a character type avatar, such as sherrif, etc, complete with life points. Players directly attack you with effects from cards in their hand.

– In Mechwarrior you attacked your opponent’s deck instead of their characters. The strategy here is not so much destroying an opponent’s characters but shutting them down or out-racing their abilities.

– In Legend of the 5 Rings there are multiple combat steps including challenges/duels along with “regular” combat. The strategy here is the ability to single out two characters to battle, along with the detractors/benefits of being able to choose whether or not to do so.

– VS System has the “Initiative” marker to help with its everyone-takes-the-same-turn system, allowing each player to choose what characters to attack with and which to leave behind to use as blockers + special abilities. “Tapped” characters may block, so it’s not really a question of do they attack or not in regards to not leaving an open alley for your opponent to smash through.

– Magic has your basic turn-based system, and Tapped characters cannot block unless an effect lets them do so. The strategy here is deciding whether an attack is “worth it” as your opponent may have a trick to let them win thanks to your greed.

So we have multiple combat steps, we have a different way to go about combat (e.g, deck destruction), and we have combat tied into how the game itself is structured. The point is that when creating a combat phase, you want to have more than a single number determining who wins and who loses. I was mired in this just the other day.

You see, there are plenty of stats that you can rely on in terms of combat. One of the reasons I absolutely hated Cyberpunk 2025 was because it had a TON of math in terms of combat. Add these figures. Subtract by X. Multiply by X. Then divide based on mission number. Etc etc. I didn’t play this game to learn algebra, I play to have fun.

Say it with me peeps: Any combat math beyond simple addition and subtraction is no fun.

Doubling/tripling a number is fine (ie, “Target creature’s power is doubled”), but any division, multiplication, and god forbid fractions, are ridiculous and have no place in a card game beyond Unglued/Unhinged (Magic “fun” sets that can’t be used competitively).

So with that said, if you wish to design a CCG, one of the first hurdles you must face is combat. Don’t worry so much about creatures or personalities or entities in the game. What you must worry about is combat and/or any phase that requires a lot of back-and-forth involvement from the players of said game. As combat is usually the most involved both players get during a single game (otherwise they’re basically playing Really Tough Solitaire), you want to make sure that it is as enjoyable and interesting as possible.

I learned this lesson the hard way: after hundreds of cards I designed, I still wasn’t 100% on my chosen combat method, and are now forced to rewrite a huge amount because I changed my mind. It is a lesson I will never forget. Combat could be the single biggest design hurdle, after winning conditions, that any card game faces.

Tomorrow: How to approach combat, what some card games have done (beyond those examples shown), and perhaps an exercise in creating a combat system.

On Premium

Welcome again, faithful reader. Today I don’t have tales of CCG creation, I have tails of CCG fandom and its implications.

A long time ago, there was a Magic fansite called The Dojo (see a classic article here). Pros would hang out, write tournament reports and strategy articles, and it got quite a bit of attention. But after a while, Brainburst came into view and began with their own content. Please note that all of this content was free, an important distinction.

Then Brainburst decided to have a Premium Membership which gave you access to the “premium” content on that site and their network of sites (that includes information on World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, VS System, etc). Many people flocked toward the newest kid on the block: Star City Games.

Well, after years of producing nearly ad-free and quality strategy content, Star City Games surprised its entire readership on Monday by announcing Premium Articles. This meant to view certain articles you paid a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee. The latter is $30, so “for just pennies a day” you can get the same content you were getting for free…for a price.

Now the content itself, I believe, is pretty damn good when it wants to be. There are plenty of times when I’ve read a Star City Games article and thought “Goddamn, this is going to change things.” While I think that the official Magic the Gathering site is even more influential, for obvious reasons, the fact that SCG does have so much pull is one reason they can even attempt Premium Content.

However, the happy tale ends here. Unfortunately, SCG decided to launch with articles by Tim Aten (a hilarious and sometimes brilliant MtG pop culture enthusiast…this is good) and Jim  Ferraiolo (This…is bad). Both are Pros by their own merits, and I have nothing wrong with either of their writing styles, though Jim does tend to be more “cut and dried”, as it were.

The error in SCG’s ways was simply ignorance to the community they have (ie, getting no opinions/feedback before launch), ignorance of the business sense in trying to merge into a pay-to-read site (you have two different logins, the store and the site), and ignorance in the fact that other sites give you other benefits than “Now you can see our cool, interesting text.” This includes discounts and/or network subscriptions, much like Brainburst and (I can’t help the analogy) porn sites often do.

So now they have a bunch of pissed off readers and upset community, with most of them subscribing and the vocal naysayers being, well, pretty damn vocal. Feel free to dive into the 12+ page forum post, but I thought this was interesting, found on pages 8 and 9, respectively. Here is what I posted first (there is more, but this is the gist):

Me? I gave SCG my $30 so fast my bank account could barely see it coming. Aten is pure genius most of the time, and Flores is the deal-sealer. Paskins can laugh at elves and make red decks, that's fine. Jim F is boring and so uncreative it actually hurts my bones to read his articles. Trust me, if there was a worse day to "feature" Jim as a selling point for Premium Content, today was not it. Aten, however, came through once again. Unf.

This is also the point where my wife goes “WTF?!” and will berate me for the charge. Um, let’s move on. Here is what Jim F. himself responded with (relatable parts only):

Man, the hits keep on coming on Kasey's coast to coast... I'm not worth $5 a year? God, what you people have done to my self-esteem today is shameful! Just shameful, I say!

Oh, and misterorange -- if I'm boring to you, you probably aren't reading your own blog very much. For someone who apparently conveys the illusion of being down to Earth and grounded, you sure do come off like a total prick.

To which I responded:

I admit, lamenting about the rarity levels (and explaining them) isn't exactly page-turning stuff, but in the scope of what I was trying to accomplish it was necessary.

Yes, I was harsh as hell. For the most part your articles are informative and decent reads. But today you went over how you made the same deck with the same cards with a few tweaks and how to sideboard against the usual decks.

This may be Pro Tour minutia, but that doesn't stop the fact that it is, in fact, minutia. That whole article was about the small tweak you made to a well known, well-played, well-versed, well-written about deck with just a few small changes.

You know what the worst part is? This is Premium Content! And I mean that in a good way! Yes, this is excellent Pro Tour level stuff. When I'm competing at that level, I -want- to know the things you speak of. What I have an issue with is that they launched the Premium Service on the back of Aten and yourself. You've had better articles man. If they wanted less complaining and more subscriptions, they should've thrown Flores or Osyp for branding power to come into effect. Then post your article later in the week, when it would fit perfectly into a Premium Content range.

And you thought only soap operas held so much drama. It will be interesting to see how SCG follows up all of this comment and criticism. This rebuttal supposed to appear tomorrow. Feel free to take in the thread but be wary…there’s trolls in them there bulletin boards.

CCG Set Size, Part Deux

So here goes my second and final piece on CCG Set Size and what it means to you as player, and myself as a designer.

Making The Numbers Work

This is a two-way street: As a designer, you want a set to either further ideas of an earlier set, or push out a whole new way of thinking (read: mechanics) and show to the player in subtle and not-so-subtle ways how to best utilize these new tools you’ve given them.

Power Levels are very important when thinking in terms of set size. If you’re working on a small set, it is most likely an extension of previous sets, and so you must take their relative power levels into consideration. The best sets generally build upon good ideas or shoot down existing archetypes (all the while building new ones), so the idea of set size based on existing power levels or new mechanics is by no means a new idea.

However, with this said we want to really define what makes up a set in terms of rarity and the design freedoms and restraint found there-in. Let’s take a walk shall we…

Commons. Commons are either underpowered, mediocre, or extremely powerful and versatile. The beauty of common cards is that you can really let your versatile muscles work out the best cards for the best situations/characters/phases and let them live in an environment with no worry for collectability (another topic I’ll touch on later). Common cards should also have a few stinkers, just for balance and draft sake, along with the excellent and powerful cards that need to be in such a slot.

Also, commons tend to be simple cards. Simple but powerful, much like a handgun, is a good analogy for a well-designed common, and if it fits into multiple decks with very little power loss, then you’re doing good. However, very situational yet powerful cards may sometimes live in this slot, but rarely (god help the pun), because these cards are better used in the Uncommon slot instead.

Uncommons. Here is where the versatile and situational cards live. They’re not inherently powerful, and there are still stinkers at this level they’re just harder to find. Situational cards begin to put pressure on the deckbuilder, particularly in draft play, to figure out the best way to use these cards to his/her advantage. Many uncommons may be powerful rares moved down a slot because of their usefulness and utility. In Magic, one could make a comparison to Eternal Witness, a card valued higher than many rares because of its powerful status. It was too powerful to print as a common, as it would disrupt draft play, and at Rare it would be too highly sought after and is simply too powerful to be in such a highly-valued slot. That isn’t to say Chase Rares don’t need to exist (this is another column all on its own), but weighing out the format you can easily agree why a card such as Eternal Witness needs to exist in that slot. An example from VS. System is Common Enemy, a team-up card that is powerful on its own in terms of the archetype it creates, yet one of my definitions of Rare is to try and define a new archetype. It’s an interesting segue from one rarity to another, and while it may not be abundantly clear, I do believe that Uncommon is definitely the way to go for both Eternal Witness and Common Enemy, in terms of power level, collectability, draft cohesion, and fun levels.

Rares. Ah, the big dogs. These should be either your most powerful yet limiting cards (ie, overly good in one aspect), and at the same time archetype-definers or set-definers. When you are actively trying to design a rare, you generally want a splash. You want something awe-inspiring. You want something powerful. You also want something that isn’t an auto-include in every deck. These cards should not only define your set in terms of power level, they should also showcase your creativity (and by-association the creativity you expect from your playerbase), while at the same time trying to carve a niche out in what always becomes a 2–3 deck tier format (ie, an archetype).

Tiers, as they are generally defined in each CCG, is the level of power a deck has in relation to others in its class. Tier 1 decks are the best of the best. They steer the metagame where it needs to go, and their existence gives designers a compass as to where they should go next. This tier is at its best when there are at least two or three Tier 1 decks, as a 33% tournament penetration factor is fantastic when looking at general decklists for a large tournament. Tiers 2 and 3 make up the wannabes, the decks that are very powerful but simply don’t have the “oomf” or synergy that a Tier 1 has, which gives them the slight edge to win most games. A good designer will notice these tiers, and while trying to strengthen the lower tiers (usually by creating Tier 1 hosers), they will also strive to create new decks to fit into that heirarchy, and by doing so shift the metagame to their compass, and do so consciously.

Getting back to Rares, you must remember that CCGs are in the business of making money (as any business is). A good set will have “Chase” rares (rares that are immensely powerful and trade very well), along with “Excellent” rares which fit in certain archetypes. Elegant rares, as I like to call them. are those which are simple but awe-inspiring in their scope and execution. Magic? Wrath of God. It destroys all creatures. VS? Sabertooth Feral Rage. A huge beatstick character that is Just Good.

Chase Rares, on the other hand, are those which are obviously overpowered, obviously awe-inspiring, obviously versatile and fit in far too many decks (or are the key to a Tier 1 deck, see: Arcbound Ravager). In Magic a case could be made for Bird of Paradise, a card I’ve spoken of before for its immense power and elegance, and for VS it is Savage Beatdown, a card that should’ve been Uncommon at most, but was obviously stuck in that slot for money reasons. While I’m not 100% convinced of Bird of Paradise being a Chase Rare by design (it was created a decade ago before the market had really created such terms), the fact that it has lasted so long and remains so good gives it Chase Rare status.

But what of the numbers? How big must a set truly be to be effective? What are the watermarks that previous sets have enjoyed? Well, let’s take a look:

VS. has 220 cards for a Large Set (110 Common, 55 Uncommon + Rare, though it seems they’re actually standardizing on this format for all upcoming sets), Magic has 320–350 per Large Set (8th Edition is 357, 113 Common + Uncommon, 111 Rare). Why do they have smaller numbers of Rares? For drafting silly. Here is one of the most difficult things to do: Design a set that works not only in Sealed Deck, but in Draft, then in Team Draft, then in Rochester, then in Constructed! All of these formats have different requirements and tastes, and for that reason you’ll see a lot of even numbers bandied around for their respective sets. For example, in Champions of Kamigawa there are 50 cards of each color. This is to ensure that when you open your packs you’ll get an even (or almost even, depending on inter-rarity uh…rarity) distribution of cards.

The inter-rarity rarity is a tough thing to describe as generally you want to balance the set with powerful and less powerful cards based on how many times they show up on a print sheet, or if its online, how likely that card will show up in a pack. These rarity levels are generally described as “Common 1” “Uncommon 3”, etc, which is how many times they show up on the print sheet or the likelyhood, in relation to other cards of the same rarity, how likely you are to get them. The harder to find commons will only show up once every few packs, while other times you’ll simply be flooded with trash because it is printed the most on the big cardboard sheet.

So to wrap things up, the idea of set size is more based on flavor, rarity, power levels, and current Tier 1–3 decks than anything else. These factors, and how your set is/will be played, are the greatest contributors to what can end up being a great set or a horrible disaster. Set the power level too high and you screw it up (See: Tempest + Urza’s Saga), or too low and no one wants to buy it or play with it (see: Homelands + Mercadian Masques).

So the next time you crack open a pack of cards, think of the time, effort, work, and deliberation that the designers took into placing those cards just so. I think you’ll agree that there is quite a bit more to making a set work than just throwing ideas into cellophane and seeing what sticks.