Unwritten Rules

[Essence]

Every game that has a single designer is going to have 'unwriten rules' that exist either deliberately, subconsciously, or -- more often than not -- as a matter of coding difficulties on the part of the designer.

If you pay attention to what is NOT done by the designer, you can sometimes discern many of these unwritten rules.  For example, Elements has no cards that directly affect the opponent's hand (except to view it).  That might be a balance issue in Zanz' mind, or it might be a coding difficulty that he simply doesn't have the time and brainpower to tackle.

Either way, designing cards with these 'unwritten rules' in mind vastly decreases the chances of your idea being discarded out of hand by Zanzarino.


Here are a few 'unwritten rules' that I can think of off hand:

• No cards that affect your opponents hand directly
• No cards that modify either players deck directly (except to put a card directly into a specific position in the deck, thus far only on top).
• No cards that take control of an opponent's creature.  This is a staple of ccgs, and the fact that it doesn't already exist says that Zanz prolly doesn't want it to.
• No cards that have multiple non-"all", non-"random" targets.  The targeting mechanism clearly is designed to handle one chosen target at a time.
• No cards that kill a creature without taking it's HP into account on some level.  (Aflatoxin used to do this until I pointed out that it was the only card that did, and Zanz changed it to be like Poison instead.  Shockwave kind of does this, but it requires 2 elements and another standing status effect to work.)
• No cards that require you to target a quanta pool.  This is probably flexible if the idea is cool enough.
• No cards that affect the "graveyard" (to borrow a M:tG term).  The game doesn't seem to have any tracking for cards that have left play, so that's a no-no.

Just keep your eyes on the cards that exist, and what they don't do, and don't push the coding envelope too hard.   

[coinich]

May I suggest one?  If proposing an upgrade, you can only improve 1, or 2 at best, stats.  No going from 2|4 to 4|8 and having the price drop by 2 quanta for example.

[pepokish]

Great job with this post, Essence.  This is incredibly useful, and very well thought out.  Huge thanks for this great addition to the forum!

Coinich, I like what you've added.  Along the same lines, the rule typically goes: upgrades may improve casting cost OR stats/ability, but not both. 

[Boingo]

I like what you've outlined.  Just a bit of clarification, if you would:

No cards that kill a creature without taking it's HP into account on some level.

Doesn't Maxwell's Demon do this?  There is no safe HP for that guy...

No cards that require you to target a quanta pool.

So Black Hole is OK since it targets every quanta pool?

[Kameda]

Doesn't Maxwell's Demon do this?  There is no safe HP for that guy...

Of course there is a safe HP. One that is higher than the attack of the creature.

[miniwally]

Maybe it should be without taking hp or attack into account as one of my card ideas took attack into account but didn't (to me) seems OP.

[unionruler]

.[/li][li]No cards that have multiple non-"all", non-"random" targets.  The targeting mechanism clearly is designed to handle one chosen target at a time.

Doesn't Nightfall/Eclipse do this (all death and darkness creatures...)? It must be possible to at least target creatures based on their elemental affiliation then. Just pointing it out; if your argument is that there's a strain on the coding then yes I'd agree.
(EDIT: sorry maybe that could be because it's being interpreted as all death creatures + all darkness creatures)

[Essence]

Unionruler, by 'target', I'm referring to the time when the red crosshairs spring up all over the possible targets of a spell or ability and you have to choose one.   Nightfall doesn't do this. 

[unionruler]

Ah okay. Because the way I read that it seemed to me that one of the intentions was to block any new cards targetting immortal/burrowed. My bad then 

[Scaredgirl]

There's one huge flaw with the original post, and that is the fact that these "unwritten rules" were not written by Zanz, they were written by a player.

How can we know that "No cards that affect the "graveyard" is an "unwritten rule"? We don't know if there will be a graveyard or not. Even Zanz might not know that at the moment. The fact that something is missing from the game currently, does not mean that there is some "unwritten rule" that says it will never happen. It's like me saying there is an unwritten rule against having pigs in Elements because there are no pigs in Elements currently.

Basically original poster (who is not a developer) is telling others what ideas are not going to happen because of some "unwritten rules" that he (not the developers) made up. And the problem is that these theories were written to sound like the law.

I was thinking about starting a "Good Ideas vs Not So Good Ideas" -thread on this section where we might list some of these things that would help players to design better cards. Some of the things listed on this thread might go under "Not So Good Ideas" but there are definitely no "unwritten rules" that say they could never happen.

So yeah.. Wording on this thread needs to drastically change. Otherwise this thread only limits creativity which is opposite of what this subsection is supposed to be about.

I'll further break down these points:

No cards that affect your opponents hand directly

I don't get this one. What's wrong with a card that for example randomly discards one card from your opponents hand? Nothing in Elements suggests that it could be done.

No cards that modify either players deck directly (except to put a card directly into a specific position in the deck, thus far only on top).

I don't get this one either. There's nothing that would suggest Zanz is against this kind of mechanic, and it would be relatively easy to pull off.

No cards that take control of an opponent's creature.  This is a staple of ccgs, and the fact that it doesn't already exist says that Zanz prolly doesn't want it to.

If by "taking control" you mean that the creature stays on your opponents side, yet you control it, then yes this could be an "unwritten rule" because it wouldn't make much sense gameplay wise.

No cards that have multiple non-"all", non-"random" targets.  The targeting mechanism clearly is designed to handle one chosen target at a time.

I kind of agree with this one. Any card that has "click three enemy targets" type of ability would be a bad choice, but effect could easily be "3 random targets..". Absolutely nothing suggest that there's an unwritten rule against this.

No cards that kill a creature without taking it's HP into account on some level.  (Aflatoxin used to do this until I pointed out that it was the only card that did, and Zanz changed it to be like Poison instead.  Shockwave kind of does this, but it requires 2 elements and another standing status effect to work.)

Mutation "kills" any creature regardless of HP. Nothing suggests that "instant kill cards" are off-limits because we already have it. Zanz might have nerfed Aflatoxin simply because it was overpowered.

No cards that require you to target a quanta pool.  This is probably flexible if the idea is cool enough.

Huh? Um.. why?

No cards that affect the "graveyard" (to borrow a M:tG term).  The game doesn't seem to have any tracking for cards that have left play, so that's a no-no.

It's not a no-no until Zanz says it's a no-no. Again, this kind of mechanic could be done and nothing suggests that there is an "unwritten rule" against it.

[Lanidrak]

Nice to see some progress being made.

Instead of having unwritten rules, have a sort of rough set of guidelines... These guidelines will rather:

• educate the card author; about game mechanics, how things work, the chronology of a turn... ie, quanta>spells>attack>weapon etc...
• informs the author about what key strengths and weaknesses each element has... and to build on these, instead of altering them completely
• advises the author on ingenuity and uniqueness, keep it plain and simple, but adaptable and useful...
• current game mechanics (some subject to change) ie... the graveyard issue, the deck/hand altering, etc...

These are just a rough draft of course, here is my reasoning...

• If you know how the game works, your card idea is - 99 times out of 100 - going to work.
• This will stop people completely overpowering one element, making a card dual element if it is obscenely powerful (e.g. Anubis)
• No one wants to read 13 pages about a card idea that requires a degree in theoretical bullshit to understand
• Don't limit them... a graveyard would be really cool, and as far as yet, it has not been totally turned down

So, that's it for now... *goes back to Lurking*

[Essence]

There's one huge flaw with the original post, and that is the fact that these "unwritten rules" were not written by Zanz, they were written by a player.

You're not really revealing anything new or interesting to anyone here.  The OP is peppered with terms like "seems", "somtimes", "changes" and "might" for a reason.  If you can honestly read that first post and think that it 'sounds like law', that's an issue you have with your own perceptions.


I don't have Zanz's ear any more than anyone else, but I have run gaming forums myself in the past, and I've worked closely with game designers in a "creating more content for my game" role -- and I can tell you, the entire OP is one made from years of experience.  All designers have unwritten rules -- most of them born from limitations on coding, some from their own unvoiced ideas about how the game 'should be' -- and if you anticipate and work within those rules, you've got a much better chance of your ideas catching the dev's attention.  Nothing more, nothing less.