you realize that it's not that simple to add a card right? especially if it's not an ability already in the game. the A.I. has to be programmed to use it properly for one thing. All the interactions with it have to be programmed, etc.
you realize that it's not that simple to add a card right? especially if it's not an ability already in the game. the A.I. has to be programmed to use it properly for one thing. All the interactions with it have to be programmed, etc.
True. I wonder if Zanz would be against this though.
Well, the game is at a stand-still until Zanz makes his next move then =/ I'm just trying to think of a way to remedy it with out sending nagging emails to Zanz asking him for more card updates and things. I just feel that more card updates used sparingly would help keep our fanbase more interested and help CIA as well, if we could get it done somehow. Say my idea doesn't work...then is there anything else that we, the community, can do?you realize that it's not that simple to add a card right? especially if it's not an ability already in the game. the A.I. has to be programmed to use it properly for one thing. All the interactions with it have to be programmed, etc.
True. I wonder if Zanz would be against this though.
against people mucking around with the game AI? most definitely.
The only problem is that there isn't really an original, balanced, game-worthy card being added to the CIA every one or two months. Perhaps this could work if we introduced a new card from the CIA once a year.
Otherwise, this idea is fine.
The popularity of Elements has peaked - zanz can't prove his programming skills any further, and it doesn't look like he is trying to. Might as well let the community help out a little. The community could do pretty much all the work for free, and zanz gets all the money. What is there to lose, seriously?
I think regularly adding cards from the top of the CIA polls would be wonderful. Using card art created by players would be wonderful. Implementing balance changes agreed upon by the community would be wonderful. Surely our Admin programmers are skilled enough to work out the bugs. Would increase forum traffic and likely increase donation revenue too.
The only problem is that there isn't really an original, balanced, game-worthy card being added to the CIA every one or two months. Perhaps this could work if we introduced a new card from the CIA once a year.This is one of the major problems. While it is easy to find cards with better design than the shards, it is rare that a card equals Pendulums or Fractal in quality. We could probably get a minimum of 4 quality cards per year provided they when through "In Development".
Not that it will ever happen but......Unless there is a revolutionary superior system it would probably reboot only the Crucible and add a new layer. I do expect most ideas would get more fine tuned. (The problem is most of the card creators think their submissions are great)
If we were to implement a community driven system I would argue for a reboot of the entire crucible, forge & armory. I bet if people knew cards had an actual chance to get into the game the submissions would improve.
...adding a new card would be difficult and open the possibility of worse bugs resulting from interactions between the authors codes...^This is the crux of the issue with card creation. Balancing is a tricky and time consuming thing to do.
Not that it will ever happen but......Unless there is a revolutionary superior system it would probably reboot only the Crucible and add a new layer. I do expect most ideas would get more fine tuned. (The problem is most of the card creators think their submissions are great)
If we were to implement a community driven system I would argue for a reboot of the entire crucible, forge & armory. I bet if people knew cards had an actual chance to get into the game the submissions would improve.
Unless there is a revolutionary superior system it would probably reboot only the Crucible and add a new layer. I do expect most ideas would get more fine tuned. (The problem is most of the card creators think their submissions are great)
[21:53] <plastiqe> Xeno I'm curious, if zanz would let you, are you capable of doing the programming to add new cards to the game?
[21:54] <!Xenocidius> I am. I'm 95% sure Zanz is in a coma or something at the moment though.
It suits you too. Those are good ideas that you should bring to the Curators.Unless there is a revolutionary superior system it would probably reboot only the Crucible and add a new layer. I do expect most ideas would get more fine tuned. (The problem is most of the card creators think their submissions are great)
Revolution is my middle name. : P
-snip-
Overall level of ideas poor
Limit how many card creations players are allowed to submit each month. Things like a 1 month wait after you register before you can start. Amount of card threads you're allowed to submit per month limited by forum rank. Less flood of ideas hopefully equals more consideration put towards each idea. No more collections of card creations or ranking the best card creators. Shift the goal from climbing the polls to creating the best card for the game.
I know that Zanz has expressed an interest in being the sole programmer, but does that mean that he would be opposed to giving one of our admins access to adding new card here and there?
While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While I respect Zanz's judgement (except with shards), I do think that a relatively unbiased forum member or members (people we would suggest as being the most objective, compared to others), would be better than inactivity/lack of updates everyday.
If someone like OldTrees were responsible for this role, I would not be worried about idea, concept, or elements balance whatsoever.
That's a pretty good point, Although for the sake of decision making, I would want it to be a sort of "triumvirate," so to speak. Two-person decisions often lead to one person's wishes being overshadowed in favor of the others. Three people ensures a more popular "majority-style" decision-making process.While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While I respect Zanz's judgement (except with shards), I do think that a relatively unbiased forum member or members (people we would suggest as being the most objective, compared to others), would be better than inactivity/lack of updates everyday.
If someone like OldTrees were responsible for this role, I would not be worried about idea, concept, or elements balance whatsoever.
I would. For all of OT's great analysis, he does not have as much practical competitive PvP experience as some of our other members. I think that a duo of him + an experienced PvPer would be great for testing card balance/power, but either one alone would not do nearly so well.
I agree that someone with a great deal of deckbuilding and pvp experience should be involved. They can see exploits I would not, have a good grasp of practical balance and understand the shape of the meta and the impact new cards would have better than I would.While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While I respect Zanz's judgement (except with shards), I do think that a relatively unbiased forum member or members (people we would suggest as being the most objective, compared to others), would be better than inactivity/lack of updates everyday.
If someone like OldTrees were responsible for this role, I would not be worried about idea, concept, or elements balance whatsoever.
I would. For all of OT's great analysis, he does not have as much practical competitive PvP experience as some of our other members. I think that a duo of him + an experienced PvPer would be great for testing card balance/power, but either one alone would not do nearly so well.
That's a pretty good point, Although for the sake of decision making, I would want it to be a sort of "triumvirate," so to speak. Two-person decisions often lead to one person's wishes being overshadowed in favor of the others. Three people ensures a more popular "majority-style" decision-making process.While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While I respect Zanz's judgement (except with shards), I do think that a relatively unbiased forum member or members (people we would suggest as being the most objective, compared to others), would be better than inactivity/lack of updates everyday.
If someone like OldTrees were responsible for this role, I would not be worried about idea, concept, or elements balance whatsoever.
I would. For all of OT's great analysis, he does not have as much practical competitive PvP experience as some of our other members. I think that a duo of him + an experienced PvPer would be great for testing card balance/power, but either one alone would not do nearly so well.
I agree that someone with a great deal of deckbuilding and pvp experience should be involved. They can see exploits I would not, have a good grasp of practical balance and understand the shape of the meta and the impact new cards would have better than I would.While it would be nice to get more toys to play with in a relatively short timescale, the only problem I see with this solution is that every person concerned/involved in the game and/or the community is somewhat biased towards ideas, concepts, or even elements - no matter how objective he/she may find themselves. I pretty much respect Zanz's viewpoint and judgement in balance/concept matters (though I still question the purpose of shards).
While I respect Zanz's judgement (except with shards), I do think that a relatively unbiased forum member or members (people we would suggest as being the most objective, compared to others), would be better than inactivity/lack of updates everyday.
If someone like OldTrees were responsible for this role, I would not be worried about idea, concept, or elements balance whatsoever.
I would. For all of OT's great analysis, he does not have as much practical competitive PvP experience as some of our other members. I think that a duo of him + an experienced PvPer would be great for testing card balance/power, but either one alone would not do nearly so well.
However I do not expect to be active enough in the future to take this role. However someone like me would be a good person to judge the structural design of cards.
Here's a few problems with card design. It's basically a three part problem. It isRegarding c) - there's also the possibilities of testing the cards as if they were in the game (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,36897.0.html), which can determine balance pretty well if done right. The downside is that 1 Playtest Match tends to take longer than 1 PvP Match unless both players are using rushes.
a) a very complex skill that
b) lots of people think they are quite good at because
c) there is no clear and fast metric to decide what is good design.
The last point is especially problematic. The first two points are true for many cases, for example Elements PvP as well. However if you are bad at Elements PvP you will find this out pretty quickly if you join some PvP Events.
So what possibilities are there for card design?
- Forum Polls? - Doubtful. A card winning a forum poll basically means that a very small, highly unrepresentative portion of the Elements playership could imagine that card to be a good addition to the game. However, what expertise does a crowd have that the individuals in it don't?
- Opinions of individual Veteran Members? This of course depends on the member, a good designer is a good designer. However the difficulty of identifying good design obviously also brings a difficulty to identify good designers. A reputation of high Card design skill can come from both actual skills and a cycle of affirmation-reaffirmation by clueless forumers.
- Monitoring Card Usage statistics? Has the advantage of getting feedback from the entire playership but is of course also influenced strongly by a cards powerlevel (especially its usefulness in AI-grinders), habits, and card availability. The disadvantage is that a card has to be put in the game first.
Another problem with taking cards from polls is that while from time to time there may be a good idea among the winning cards, there would be no greater concept behind Elements sooner or later (such as Element A should be good at X, while not so good at Y, etc.).
The best answers I have to C are:
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.
2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.
I would measure it by number of viable strategies using number of viable decks as a rough estimate. UP cards do not affect the metagame, balanced cards grow the metagame (usually by addition) and OP cards shrink the metagame.The best answers I have to C are:
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.
2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.
What is growing the metagame? Is it increasing the number of viable cards, or the number of viable strategies, or something else?
I would measure it by number of viable strategies using number of viable decks as a rough estimate. UP cards do not affect the metagame, balanced cards grow the metagame (usually by addition) and OP cards shrink the metagame.The best answers I have to C are:
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.
2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.
What is growing the metagame? Is it increasing the number of viable cards, or the number of viable strategies, or something else?
I guess my definition of deck is closer to archetype. My definition of strategies is more abstract.I would measure it by number of viable strategies using number of viable decks as a rough estimate. UP cards do not affect the metagame, balanced cards grow the metagame (usually by addition) and OP cards shrink the metagame.The best answers I have to C are:
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.
2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.
What is growing the metagame? Is it increasing the number of viable cards, or the number of viable strategies, or something else?
I do not like this definition because the number of viable strategies and the number of viable decks are not highly correlated. RootRanger's idea of metagame changes, for example, would absolutely destroy all forms of denial and I would consider that a large blow to the metagame even though relatively few decks are affected. Entire archetypes can still consist of a small number of decks.
It could be done if Zanz were willing. I would understand if he were unwilling.
The best answers I have to C are:Hrrmm yes. Obviously this would work theoretically but even though this community is more mature than most, it is still an internet forum...
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.
2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.Let me present two examples from another big CCG. (apologies for doing this but there simply isn't enough precedence for EtG to make my point)
I need to get more background on the Jund era before I can have an opinion about whether their is causation involved.The best answers I have to C are:Hrrmm yes. Obviously this would work theoretically but even though this community is more mature than most, it is still an internet forum...
1) Discussion. Opinions backed with reasoning where the goal is to leave with the correct answer rather than have others leave with your answer.2) My opinion: Increased player enjoyment is easiest to create by increased desired play time and more players. Increased desired play time and more players both are easily created by more diversity in the options and experience. This is accomplished by growing the metagame. Good design relates to how much it grows the metagame. Cards that add are good. Cards that multiply are great.Let me present two examples from another big CCG. (apologies for doing this but there simply isn't enough precedence for EtG to make my point)
2. Time Spiral Limited. The "Time Spiral" set presented the most diverse Limited environment of all time. Basically what they did there was reprint mechanics from all over the history of MtG and mash them together in one epic set. The result? Players hated it, attendance for Limited tournaments plummeted (compare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpr9wSLDbM#t=14m10s)).
It could be done if Zanz were willing. I would understand if he were unwilling.
...and this folks, is the crux of the problem.
I wanted to refrain posting in this thread because, hey, any idea of 'community-based development' is cool, right?
The issue with this all ties in directly to zanzarino and him alone; unless he decides to extend his development team beyond himself, the game's progress is dwindling rather than speeding up (for an extensive flash game, which is essentially death). What hurts more is that even if we managed to get the 'optimal solution' to card design (yes, I know we're using Kael's/SG's old system still), the idea of the community having a more active part in developing the game is moot, because without the ability to actually hard-implement or test the concepts in question, card ideas and suggestions (or anything related to game development) feels somewhat fruitless.
As long as he remains unwilling, the public will, in turn, be unwilling to subconsciously continue on.
I need to get more background on the Jund era before I can have an opinion about whether their is causation involved.There is obviously no causation involved whatsoever, on the contrary! Having one vastly dominant deck in the metagame is bad. The important point to note is that there is a whole ton of other factors which can make a game fun/enjoyable, and the Alara block did a lot of them very well.
Buying reprinted cards is not of interest to players that existed when they came out previously. Consider if an EtG update had no new cards. People would be upset. Color shifted cards were more valuable but still might have felt reprinted. The complexity of the set was off-putting to new players. Consider an EtG update with only Kael cards (very complex cards).There were not many reprinted cards (at lower rarity), there were just many old mechanics reused (along with quite a few new ones). Also the cards themselves were not the problem, each of them individually would have been completely fine in another set. It was exactly the overdone diversity what made the format so appalling for many players. So the lesson there is that diversity does not scale linearrily (nothing ever does) with enjoyability. There is such a thing as too much.
Oh. I thought you were going for stronger claims. I took those two facts as assumed. There are lots of other methods for adding enjoyment besides variety. I consider the variety to the the backbone since it is easiest. Nothing scales linearly indefinitely. As the marginal benefit of versatility declines, it cannot be justified to forsake increasing the originally less efficient means of adding enjoyment. To be honest variety is not the easiest means of adding enjoyment. The absolute easiest is thematic consistency. However EtG quickly maxed that out.I need to get more background on the Jund era before I can have an opinion about whether their is causation involved.There is obviously no causation involved whatsoever, on the contrary! Having one vastly dominant deck in the metagame is bad. The important point to note is that there is a whole ton of other factors which can make a game fun/enjoyable, and the Alara block did a lot of them very well.Buying reprinted cards is not of interest to players that existed when they came out previously. Consider if an EtG update had no new cards. People would be upset. Color shifted cards were more valuable but still might have felt reprinted. The complexity of the set was off-putting to new players. Consider an EtG update with only Kael cards (very complex cards).There were not many reprinted cards (at lower rarity), there were just many old mechanics reused (along with quite a few new ones). Also the cards themselves were not the problem, each of them individually would have been completely fine in another set. It was exactly the overdone diversity what made the format so appalling for many players. So the lesson there is that diversity does not scale linearrily (nothing ever does) with enjoyability. There is such a thing as too much.
Oh. I thought you were going for stronger claims. I took those two facts as assumed. There are lots of other methods for adding enjoyment besides variety. I consider the variety to the the backbone since it is easiest.First of all, using the word "easiest" here is quite misleading. It might be the easiest available but that is highly debatable. It is definitely not "easy" - as my examples show, people who do CCG design for a living can mess up badly there.
The absolute easiest is thematic consistency. However EtG quickly maxed that out.So let's talk about EtG then.
They do selling CCG products for a living. This warps many of their choices (Rare => Power?!). Plus they get to make the mistakes first for us to learn from. However I do agree that "least difficult" might be a better term.Oh. I thought you were going for stronger claims. I took those two facts as assumed. There are lots of other methods for adding enjoyment besides variety. I consider the variety to the the backbone since it is easiest.First of all, using the word "easiest" here is quite misleading. It might be the easiest available but that is highly debatable. It is definitely not "easy" - as my examples show, people who do CCG design for a living can mess up badly there.
The absolute easiest is thematic consistency. However EtG quickly maxed that out.So let's talk about EtG then.
Right now the biggest problems EtG has are
1) A very stagnant metagame. The problem here is really not the variety in terms of possible deck types, but the variety over time. A new player can't complain that there are too few different decks/deck types for him to play, however an old player might certainly complain that he is still playing basically the same Grabbow/Fire Bolt deck/Dim Shield stall as two years ago. The reasons for this are, on the one hand, generally slow updates and on the other hand, the second big problem which is
2) that the community basically rejected the latest batch of updates (aka the Shards). Why was that? Certainly, some of them are overpowered quite blatantly, but that is no reason to condemn the others as well. Out of the rest there's a few strong ones, some are mediocre and some of course are also just weak. But those are still banned in any competitive Event. Their problem is not variety either, we have actually seen quite a number of creative new decks spawned by them. What the shards are missing is resonance. Put simply, they are not what people expect/want to see in a fantasy card game. (It is what you could mean by thematic consistency, but I'm not sure.) There are actually quite a number of Elemets cards that are lacking in this respect, such as the Dragons, Blue Crawler, Guardian Angel, Black Hole, Thorn Carapace only to name a few.
If someone could set up a similar such board and organize it I believe we could really get down to making something happen(I'd do so myself but my voice is significantly smaller and my knowledge limited in scope).We do have such boards in the forum of Community Card Design and the Idea Factory. However the Idea Factory's membership requirement is beginning to prove a bit of a hurdle and Community Card Design focuses exclusively on designing one card.
Many of these are pretty good i think.Unless there is a revolutionary superior system it would probably reboot only the Crucible and add a new layer. I do expect most ideas would get more fine tuned. (The problem is most of the card creators think their submissions are great)
Revolution is my middle name. : P
(http://ts2.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4780410964280061&id=d57743275888291e8f4b33046bc3f6ba)
Here are the problems as I see them, with solutions:Everything gets archivedEdit:
New rules means everyone starts on equal footing. I wouldn't want to grandfather cards in the armory that were created under the old system into the game.
Overall level of ideas poor
Limit how many card creations players are allowed to submit each month. Things like a 1 month wait after you register before you can start. Amount of card threads you're allowed to submit per month limited by forum rank. Less flood of ideas hopefully equals more consideration put towards each idea. No more collections of card creations or ranking the best card creators. Shift the goal from climbing the polls to creating the best card for the game.
Reusing old ideas
You're allowed to re-make one of your old cards from the archives as your idea for the month. You can remake someone else's with permission/if they're long gone/give them credit.
Not getting the right ideas
Have more contests like Shard Revolution (bad example, shards suck) where a specific theme that is lacking in the game is explored with card ideas. CC protection for Life contest, or PC for more elements contest, etc.
People don't vote for best idea
No card art during card creation, card mechanics are voted on rather than looks.
Once an idea is selected for In Development, have art contests to find the best art.
Blind submission/voting system. Maybe all card creation ideas are pm'ed to curators, who sort them and post them for voting. Or we don't use player names on the submissions. Ideally we'd remove player popularity from the equation. If several people have the same idea then several people get credit.
I'm probably quite a few checks and balances away from anything near a perfect system. It's all just fantasy since I don't think zanz would ever let the players take over.
[21:53] <plastiqe> Xeno I'm curious, if zanz would let you, are you capable of doing the programming to add new cards to the game?
[21:54] <!Xenocidius> I am. I'm 95% sure Zanz is in a coma or something at the moment though.