Resource System Change

[snowdrop]

Notice:The fFollowing is copy & paste from email convo by me and Q_x, posted without me asking for permission in an attempt to get the discussion more public and easier to reach for Ravenchild.

By Q_x to snowdrop, 26:th of July 2011:

Hey!

I've seen some work on rules you've done.
I'm curious... This is an outcome of any tests? How did it went?

I'm still thinking about feedback. I hope this is the last time I mail it.
My problem is to design the game cycle in the way, that when it's
being played, how good player is may determine how fast he develops,
but in the first place skill should determine how well he can develop
the table at all, and the difference between table of weak and strong
player in the end should be really not big - visible, but not obvious.
Following things are somewhat connected.

First mechanism makes a kind of resource suffocating - basically "you
have feel weak to play strong cards". My proposal is a rule that says
something like "you need not only pay gold cost when playing a
creature, but also shuffle faction-matching cards from RP back to the
deck in the amount equal to creature's threshold" (or to a separate
pile that will replace the deck once there will be no cards in it).
This idea of shuffling cards back is seriously the most promising
thing I've invented so far. Making threshold "a second cost" paid in
cards taken from the table to the deck should really do not only one
trick - it also makes reusing RPs content easier, this way more cards
will finally meet the table, good deck will be even more important,
and players will be able to decrease randomness that shuffled deck
introduces - with time there will be more and more cards they know of
in the deck. It may also reduce overall deck size by 20% or more.
So changing how threshold works is one idea for that, the other is
using gold cost this way, leaving threshold as it is now. This is, I
think, not as good idea, as the above - paying for cards only with
removing cards will simply make some trouble I think.

Second is - maybe we could have creatures immortal, but being defeated
make them being moved to something like "regroup zone", where to get a
creature back, you need to mark a leader (or just wait a turn, making
regroup zone basically a double-mark technique)? This will pretty much
eliminate the technique that makes quick growth the most efficient way
of dominating the table, so it will help in early game balancing and
allow shorter games to be played without any serious issues.

Finally third - paying threshold cost in gold every time a creature
attacks - this, combined with the above, will eliminate further
domination by gradual overpowering. Basically if a player wants to
play a creature onto his table, so removing some cards from a resource
pile, he will have his attacking power temporarily lowered. This, on
the other hand, helps with designing good winning strategies that will
actually take some time - no mass spawning can be done safely, no
quick winning, no big tables or big battles. You grow resources, or
you grow in power, or you fight. This will make blocking really easy
(that is if there will be many creatures in the endgame on the table,
mainly unused), but with single creature vs. single creature fights
there will be some attacks passing through. I'm not sure if 1 vs. 1
should be the only model - if not, game may easy hit a deadlock
situation (attacking side ends with some creatures marked, cards used,
so blocking side will attack in the following turn, and attacker
looses), but this has some potential, and may be quite fruity to
actually create such model - it is known, for example, from judo.

I have not been play-testing those changes. But I think that they will
help to make the resource system that needs really careful planing,
will make deck editing even more important, with less safety margin,
will develop fair early game, dynamic middle game and really
thoughtful battles in the late game. It will also hopefully reduce
deck size for a given game time when compared to what we have now.

To summarize:
cost of playing card = resources occupied & resources removed back to deck
immortal creatures (regroup zone)
occupied resources to pay for attack

<cut out private>

Cheers,
Luke

[snowdrop]

By snowdrop to Q_x, 27:th of June 2011:

I've seen some work on rules you've done.
I'm curious... This is an outcome of any tests? How did it went?

1. I've revised and hopefully made some things easier to understand and somewhat clearer in the rules. Not too many things, but a few. There's still much to do on that front, but it's nothing I give priority until the rules are "decided". I like cleaning up the rules at least onc every 3 or 6:th months or so because that's how long it takes for me to see them in a different light and notice what is still missing, is unclear or very ill defined. (And yeah, as written, there is plenty of that around..)

2. I've added "assignment" stuff, or assignation. That is not playtested but a solid thing as nothing can go wrong with it, for real, and it is in reality a fix to many many types of abilities in plenty of CCG:s that are usually used frequently by the player.

a) The problem in for example MtG with those abilities are that you have to mark to use them, and that the card becomes unmarked the turn after, and then you have to mark it again, and round and round it goes. In MtG it is partially solved by custom text like "You don't have to untap x during your untap phasa if you don't want to", but I'd rather see it more systemized and built upon, which I think we do in:

b) I'm imagining some abilities to be of such a significance and used so frequently that they can be placed in this category (assigned abilities, or rather, assigned functions) of their own where their cost of usage goes up in other ways than just economy. We don't only solve the problem in a), we also add some depth and broaden how abilities can function and gain some design space, to almost no disadvantage. Notice that I still believe that creatures with assigned abilities should be kept somewhere around 10% of the total cardpool and that it's a kind of "specialist class" of creatures that will possess them.

c) Today(?) I added some stuff that was geared to solve the problem that could arise when a player has only cards with threshold requirement in hand/deck and where he has zero threshold points (since he has zero creatures on table from that faction). Actually, I'm convinced that the Exahustion-rule as I added it can be made more elegant and will need modification. It is not playtested and is only based on my imagination. I think it is a rule that should in general be hard to exploit and costly, but that, in the very rare cases a player builds such a faulty deck or has such bad luck, the rule offers the player an emergency solution. As written, I am not at peace with it and expect it to change a lot with time.


As for the rest of your mail I have a really hard time actually grasping your train of thoughts: I know for a fact that you have raised similar worries earlier but I am now more sure than ever that I don't understand them. I think it's a mix of your thoughts not being explained enough in detail or with examples and us two not using English as native tongue, really.

Honestly, I think we should book a voice-session on Mumble as soon as you can and that we should just agree on a private meeting time & date where we can try to figure out both our perspectives, so we can nail the communication once and for all on the subject matter. Hence, I will only address what I actually believe I (partially) understood, but I'd rather see us discuss this with voice.

My problem is to design the game cycle in the way, that when it's
being played, how good player is may determine how fast he develops,
but in the first place skill should determine how well he can develop
the table at all,

1. What's a cycle? You mean the turn phases, or just the game-flow/game in general?
2. Do you make a difference between "how good a player is" and a players "skill"? It sounds to me like that in the quote above, but I'm not sure you really do.

and the difference between table of weak and strong
player in the end should be really not big - visible, but not obvious.

This I know that we have mentioned before, without resolution. I get the feeling that you imagine that a deck building game can be created where two players, almost no matter how they construct their decks, will play a so-and-so even game. You believe that the better player will still win, but you don't think that there should be a night-and-day difference between the two players battling it out. At least that is your preference, if I understand you correct(?)

We fully agree that it is preferable for us to create a game where the outcome of the game isn't decided the first 5 minutes. We do of course want to avoid creating a game where it is determined the frist 5 - 10 min who wins and who loses, and where the rest of the following hour is just some strange and needless ritual of how to win/lose a game and, even worse, one seeing all that happening in front of your eyes pre-determined without giving you any chance at all to change the tides.

We agree that a game where the leader is exponentially rewarded and/or where the loser is exponentially punished is a very bad thing as it really makes it impossible to change the tide and also meaning less to play, depriving the game of any excitement. We agree on that we don't want a game where the gap just grows and grows and can never be catched up.

What we don't seem to agree/understand each other in is what we believe causes such (as described above just now) situation and perhaps also if it can get a perfect fix, or if it could, if it should. I really think we need to discuss this "live" for me to understand what you're suggesting, and then try to put it into relation of deck building creativity, broadness/possible combos in the game, future faction development, etc etc. There is a vast majority of topics that all relate to all of this in various ways.

First mechanism makes a kind of resource suffocating - basically "you
have feel weak to play strong cards".

I don't understand that part.

My proposal is a rule that says
something like "you need not only pay gold cost when playing a
creature, but also shuffle faction-matching cards from RP back to the deck in the amount equal to creature's threshold" (or to a separate pile that will replace the deck once there will be no cards in it).

(With reservations of not understanding what this is fixing:) There are a number of ways to limit play of very dangerous creatures. http://www.mrocznyraj.pl/sklep/images/p ... e-tank.jpg is an example from DoomTrooper. That unit was a serious problem for any opponent once it was played, but to play it you would first have to play 2 other creatures with the name "Dragoon". Getting this 3-card combo, having the resources + survive with the dragoons long enough for the Grizzly to enter play was a challenge. Doable, but a challenge, and a fun one even as it was kind of an internal mini-mission and also hard to build a whole deck around just this beast.

I can think of two main issues with what you suggest if it is going to be used as core rule for every creature in the game, as opposed to using it for just as custom text for 2-3.

a) It will more or less require that RP:s are played face up for that reason alone. (Sure, they could still be face down, but that way it's even more hassle for the player every time he needs to check what is where in the RP:s).

I think that RP:s face up is generally a bad idea since it adds more clutter to the table and makes it somewhat harder to get an overview and understand what is in what front and what is active and what is passive (in RP). I would say this about any idea that built on us having more "passive cards" face up as the criticism is the same.

b) What is even a bigger problem is the constant need of re-shuffling. Games with constant re-shuffling built in in their core are pain in the ass. Doing a proper shuffle in a CCG takes time (there is an interesting essay, a real on on the math at some university that you can find easily online, on this subject when it comes to MtG that would apply to our game as well). Do it unproper and you get a fake-shuffle, cluster-shuffling, which is almost no randomisation at all. So, it takes time, it is tedious extra admin and it even will affect wear on the cards (a reply would be that we use sleeves, and we do, but they just make it harder to shuffle). This is however all fixed by what you propse - instead of re-shuffling all the time, using a separate pile that is later recycled. I think that is the best way to do it, if using something like it.

Making threshold "a second cost" paid in
cards taken from the table to the deck should really do not only one
trick - it also makes reusing RPs content easier, this way more cards
will finally meet the table, good deck will be even more important,

As I've said on several other ocassions I have no issues with making thresh working (totally) diff than it does today. However, we have concept tested once and I still have no reason to consider it's current state as broken nor a working one. That said, we could still discuss alternatives ofc as something brilliant might show up.

I don't think that this idea is the only way to re-cycle/put into play the cards that are used as resources in the RP:s. It would be one though, but doing it can be even simpler - a rule that just says "Instead of drawing a new card from the army deck you are allowed to play a card from a resource pile if you have not used that resource pile this turn" or something along those lines. You are right though that it would be a nice side-effect, although not the main argument.

and players will be able to decrease randomness that shuffled deck
introduces - with time there will be more and more cards they know of
in the deck.

I'm one of those players that believe that luck matters extremely little in a game of MtG. My own experience is that a player with less experience than me and with an inferior deck will win over me due to "luck" like a maximum of 3-5% of the games we play. If so, it means that 95% of the result when I play is mainly based on me being good, and/or him being a bad player. "Luck" matters more in even matchups where skills and deck builds are very even.

However, even then I'd claim that a solid deck usually performs smooth and well all around. That randomness can work both for you and against you is something that is a feature in the genre, not a problem, really. If it is to be considered a problem then we should not use randomness at all and just let players pick any card they want at any time from their draw decks (the thought has occurred to me several times). As it is we I don't think we have more randomness than 99% of the CCG:s out there. We def. have less than MtG, which I think is a good thing. I would certainly not want us to introduce more randomness in WT than we already have.

Also, a player should always know what cards are in his deck or not: He built it. I mean, how hard can it be knowing them? I believe most players do know, and if not, starting to keeping track isn't hard.

It may also reduce overall deck size by 20% or more.

I'm all for reducing deck size and would love it if we ended up with a game of just 30 - 40 cards per deck or so. That said, it is a side effect and not the main argument, but a good and desirable effect nevertheless. I imagine we should never aim at going beyond 60 cards per deck, ever. Preferably less.

Second is - maybe we could have creatures immortal, but being defeated
make them being moved to something like "regroup zone", where to get a
creature back, you need to mark a leader (or just wait a turn, making
regroup zone basically a double-mark technique)? This will pretty much
eliminate the technique that makes quick growth the most efficient way
of dominating the table, so it will help in early game balancing and
allow shorter games to be played without any serious issues.

Here my stupidity comes in again: Why would we want that in the first place?

You seem to suggest that you want to eliminate the ultimate strategy, which you describe as mass-spawn cheap creatures. Thing is there is no ultimate strategy: If you build a weenie-deck that mass spawns cheap 1/1-creatures you will of course be able to fill the table with cheap crap and deal damage until you reach mid-game, where tide will easily change, leaving you with tier 1 units while the other player built heavier resourc piles, allowing him to play tier x stuff.

Quick growth always comes at a price. It does so in MtG, and here as well. If it doesnt, then the design is flawed and needs to be changed ofc.

Quick growth is synonyme with short-term and cheap weak masses of creatures/whatever. What you want to do in StarCraft terms is to disallow a zergling rush, or any kind of rush at all for that matter. Rushes are no problem. After you play such a player once you learn that you must be prepared for them. It's the same here: It is evident that you can't expect to play solo on the table without the interference of your opponent for 10 turns while you build your heavy army. The very notion that it is a Sim City game where you are allowed x turns without dircect opponent interaction is screwed.

Better yet: You can never create a system where the player doesn't mass the cheapest shit around and gives it a try. Even if you had a rule that said "no attacks the first 10 turns" you would still end up with rushes even then - they would just be 10 turns delayed, but still be same in logic. The way to solve the rush problem is to create cards that are faction sdpecific and that are designed to allow that faction to deal with early rushes in their own way.

This is also much a discussion of what kind of "flow" we want in the game. I mean, you could for instance create a game where you only get to build a deck that has a total cost of x gold, and where different actions cost diff Action Points, so that attacking with a giant can cost 3 AP while attacking with a rat 1 AP etc. You could try to make the game and every deck in it somewhat customizable but still very limited, and just rely on us to build the decks for the people so we know that all have balanced decks etc... but the more you do that, the less creativity, personalizing and customizing we get, and in the long run I think it kills the pros in a community, competetive play and even maybe hinders game dev.

Finally third - paying threshold cost in gold every time a creature
attacks - this, combined with the above, will eliminate further
domination by gradual overpowering. Basically if a player wants to
play a creature onto his table, so removing some cards from a resource
pile, he will have his attacking power temporarily lowered. This, on
the other hand, helps with designing good winning strategies that will
actually take some time - no mass spawning can be done safely, no
quick winning, no big tables or big battles. You grow resources, or
you grow in power, or you figh

Voice Only part I understood was that you pay the thresh in gold every tim you want to attack, so in essence we would have no threshold (creating a huge problem since you can then mix any factions without punishment) or we would keep the threash as it is now but just add the pay gold-thingie, so it gives us a "usage cost" (introducing the problem with the usage cost being higher the more faction-flavoured a unit is...)

Here again you address the issues(?) with quick-wins and rush strategies... so it is a clear theme for you = P ...I just have to listen to you explaining why it needs to be hindered with core rules in contrast to cards and card balance.

Get back to me about time when we can talk.. think it will save us zillion hours. = P


/s

[snowdrop]

By Q_x to snowdrop, 27:th of July

I think we can talk at just about every moment, but I think we may
want to make a meeting devoted solely to rule development, as I'm not
only to actually have some input.
I can fill my thoughts into forums if that's the case, and we can
announce a single meeting, or whole series of meetings if needed.

Biggest problem for me is that this is a kind of complex set of
changes that play together.
I'm mixing the order of reply completely for the sake of clarity, I
think you will find all your bigger questions answered, even though
some stuff is answered here (I tagged it with [1] to [3] to link it
with your writing in some places, other stuff is entangled within
quotes

I used some of the heaviest weapons in my army to illustrate things:
diagrams! (vertical axis is "power", you may want to scientificize it
with something like smoothed sigma of A and D values of all the
creatures able to attack)

I'll explain once again:

As I see now our model, game cycle (I call this a time from a start to
an end "a game cycle") consists of three parts: development, when
players don't attack each other, middle part where one player
dominates the other, and endgame - boring cutting down other's
creatures and hitting influence. This is fig. 1.
Fig. 2. is a real-life cycle - once one of the players dominates the
table, there is very little both can do to change anything. We've seen
this while testing - basically hitting an opponent makes him weaker.
We may want to patch in many ways, changing the rule system makes same
sense as invinting a dozen of cards at this point. This may be a kind
of behavior 100% logical from reasoning point of view - winners are
getting better, losers are weaker and weaker, but it's a design flaw -
simply because makes winner lazy, loser - bored, and whole game -
unimportant. Pretty much the [2] issue.
[3] What I see instead is that the game should be solved by applying a
wining strategy in the endgame, or slowly increasing advantage through
whole middle part of the game.
Most interesting game model is in fact the one where is possible a
scenario like: stronger side attacks too early and looses - quite
impossible in our current state, I think.
You can of course push taking care for all such features to balancing
and card development, but, as for now, we have significant problem to
even shape factions and developing strategies is really taking a lot
of effort. And rules are not the impeding factor (I think what impedes
us is bizarre enough to avoid being described here).

This is why I was thinking about those various feedback mechanisms.

Resource feedback loop, or suffocating: discard resource cards to play
certain (majority of creatures, some other too) cards - this is how
threshold can work. Cards have to be faction-matching and have to be
discarded from a resource pile. They are discarded to a separate pile
that, once deck ends, is shuffled and used as the deck. You play a
creature - you have to rebuild your resources a bit, so there should
be a point where game speeds up, but active "power" on the table
remains constant, just because all the excess is used actively and
remains marked (compare fig. 1. and 3)
It's maybe not the most brilliant way to deal with feedback, but I
think it will make balancing it really easy.

Immortal creatures. If a creature has been defeated - it has to spent
some time retreating and regrouping, so it is moved to regroup zone,
and later may, but not must, be deployed into any front, marked. [1]
Some creatures may have abilities that are activated in regroup zone.
What this does is to prevent domination (fig. 4.). You lost big battle
due to other player blocking you completely - it's no problem. If you
lost many creatures, he will attack you in the next turn, if he lost -
you will attack him. This is the slow thing I called "small advantage"
on fig. 6. - basically defending with time should be harder with time
for the weaker player, mostly due to bad deck.

The two things play together - one makes growth a little bit slower,
and deploying a big creature may be really very expensive, second is
laking losing battle a bit less painful.

Finally there is this third thing - paying for attack, that comes in
hand with two following.
You have only one source of resources, this are resource piles.
Big creature comes into play - first, second, third... All those not
only "cost gold", but also take some resources for good and trash it.
And in the end, while you played the third one, you can block attacks,
but you can attack with one of those only (you have to wait for more
resources).

All this I invented to achieve certain goals, most important is to
make elastic game length, more fun inside the game cycle, especially
the deadlock before the major strike, and meaningful balancing
options, like when you change cost or threshold, it really can change
a lot.
Of course this is all just plain theory, and the reality may be odd,
as always...

So, how about general team rule-meeting somewhere during next month?

Cheers,
Luke

---

> a) The problem in for example MtG with those abilities are that you have to
> mark to use them, and that the card becomes unmarked the turn after, and
> then you have to mark it again, and round and round it goes. In MtG it is
> partially solved by custom text like "You don't have to untap x during your
> untap phasa if you don't want to", but I'd rather see it more systemized and
> built upon, which I think we do in:

[1]

Cycle is from start to end of a game. Skill is how good a player is,
same thing named twice.

> This I know that we have mentioned before, without resolution. I get the
> feeling that you imagine that a deck building game can be created where two
> players, almost no matter how they construct their decks, will play a
> so-and-so even game. You believe that the better player will still win, but
> you don't think that there should be a night-and-day difference between the
> two players battling it out. At least that is your preference, if I
> understand you correct(?)

Not quite. Problem is that players who are close to each other in
terms of deck power and skill should be able to play good, long and
demanding game. I think we can easily exclude thinking about really
good vs. really bad player, we are making card game, not a chess-like
thing.

> We fully agree that it is preferable for us to create a game where the
> outcome of the game isn't decided the first 5 minutes. We do of course want
> to avoid creating a game where it is determined the frist 5 - 10 min who
> wins and who loses, and where the rest of the following hour is just some
> strange and needless ritual of how to win/lose a game and, even worse, one
> seeing all that happening in front of your eyes pre-determined without
> giving you any chance at all to change the tides.
> We agree that a game where the leader is exponentially rewarded and/or where
> the loser is exponentially punished is a very bad thing as it really makes
> it impossible to change the tide and also meaning less to play, depriving
> the game of any excitement. We agree on that we don't want a game where the
> gap just grows and grows and can never be catched up.

[2]

> What we don't seem to agree/understand each other in is what we believe
> causes such (as described above just now) situation and perhaps also if it
> can get a perfect fix, or if it could, if it should. I really think we need
> to discuss this "live" for me to understand what you're suggesting, and then
> try to put it into relation of deck building creativity, broadness/possible
> combos in the game, future faction development, etc etc. There is a vast
> majority of topics that all relate to all of this in various ways.

I've tried to explain what may cause such a gap. [3]

>
>> First mechanism makes a kind of resource suffocating - basically "you
>> have feel weak to play strong cards".
>
> I don't understand that part.

Explained above best I could.


I doubt if face up/face down resource piles are really the factor of
any importancy at this stage...
Shuffling can be done once at the deck's end.

MtG deck - how big it was? How long the game? Was it dynamic? If we're
targeting short games - I think my conclusions from this comparison
are not 100% the same as yours. A little bit of luck, like getting the
right cards at start, may change whole game (as it is now). How to
avoid that is to enable player to use and recycle those cards that are
not good at a given moment. Stack onto pile, later discard as a cost,
finally shuffle back to the deck.

There should be no winning strategy, only given possibilities of developing one.
But immortalizing creatures was not about 1/1 creatures. It is to
prevent overpowering of one player, never to get into total
domination.

While fighting slow-to-develop vs. quick-start decks, one of the
problems is that the stronger deck will never dominate quicker one,
just because every creature will be attacked just after deploying by
2-3 other creatures, and even if it survives, there will be little
chances for it to survive it once again.

This of course may be changed by a rule that makes explicit 1 vs. 1
fights (so that a single creature can block a single creature only) -
but this, again, is just unneeded lack of liberty - I want my creature
to attack 2 attackers vs. 1 blocker - it should be perfectly
possible...

> Quick growth always comes at a price. It does so in MtG, and here as well.
> If it doesnt, then the design is flawed and needs to be changed ofc.
>
> Better yet: You can never create a system where the player doesn't mass the
> cheapest shit around and gives it a try. Even if you had a rule that said
> "no attacks the first 10 turns" you would still end up with rushes even then
> - they would just be 10 turns delayed, but still be same in logic. The way
> to solve the rush problem is to create cards that are faction sdpecific and
> that are designed to allow that faction to deal with early rushes in their
> own way.

Lack of such rash is a serious design flaw we have - simply there will
be no chances of spawning many creatures, because you draw one card
per turn (or two), period. You have too many weak creatures - you will
run out of events needed to eliminate serious monsters.

[snowdrop]

I think we can talk at just about every moment, but I think we may
want to make a meeting devoted solely to rule development, as I'm not
only to actually have some input.
I can fill my thoughts into forums if that's the case, and we can
announce a single meeting, or whole series of meetings if needed.

I'll try to fetch you as soon as I see you online and have a chance myself. As I mentioned on IM I think it's best to not call a meeting quite yet since it would just force all to listen to you explaining stuff to me because of me not understanding Afterwards we can call to meeting(s). Should anyone want to listen to our convo though I am perfectly fine with that.

...(vertical axis is "power", you may want to scientificize it
with something like smoothed sigma of A and D values of all the
creatures able to attack)

*hides*

Regrettably I studied some economy at the uni and have ever since a huge mistrust of dias whenever I see them. I must admit they don't tell me anything.. or, maybe - how you envision it would develop with your rule mods. My problem is that I don't understand how you derive the form of the curves(?) and I guess their shape come from the very assumptions and interpretations we're now discussing in this thread.

As I see now our model, game cycle (I call this a time from a start to
an end "a game cycle") consists of three parts: development, when
players don't attack each other, middle part where one player
dominates the other, and endgame - boring cutting down other's
creatures and hitting influence. This is fig. 1.

It is not my intention with current ORC for us to have any of the three "meta-phases" you mention. I don't imagine ORC to play out that way and don't have it as a goal. On the contrary I'd want the game as it is in ORC right now to be free from meta-phases. I also think a game should define such phases in their rules (I think "Legend of the five rings" does that...) if it is to have them at all.

I don't agree we have such phases and I'd rather describe it like this: Each individual deckbuild will have a certain tempo and turn for when it can theoretically "peak" and get it's main functions going.

Code: Select all

For example, if I build my deck around 3 different key cards that cost 4 each, and have 4 copies of each of thes 3 key cards, one might suggest that I won't be able to put my deck in full motion until turn 6, but may start rolling the wheel at turn 4.   (Turn 4 = 4 resources in my one and only RP)

Since decks are custom built they will of course many times mismatch each other in tempo. Some will be "faster" than others in reaching their goals. This isn't a problem(? yet proven), it's a feature., since there is a relation between playing cheap and fast stuff and offensive and other types of power.

Fig. 2. is a real-life cycle - once one of the players dominates the
table, there is very little both can do to change anything. We've seen
this while testing - basically hitting an opponent makes him weaker.

No, we haven't. You have. That's the thing - we have too little testing data to draw any conclusions still.

I'm fine with one player not being able to get back into the game if he is dominated by the other player.

Here we must explain what dominate actually means: If you lose the game just because you lost a creature in the start then either the game is broken on a dev level or the players strategy/deck was broken beyond repair (e.g. the player based all of his deck around 2 cards, but only included one copy of each card... now he loses the gam (ofc!) but what does that tell us about the design of it? Well, nothing, except that our game isn't idiot-proof since he'd be an idiot to build the deck that way to start with)

In some cases a player might even have a deck that wins 70% of the time it playes against 80% of all decks it versus. Then again, that same deck will maybe be outclassed by half of the 20% of the decks it usually doesn't beat. Here you must ask yourself if that is a game design flaw or not. I don't think it is, due to our modular nature. Only way to mend it is to make the game very much less customizable in the end if this is the problem according to you.

This may be a kind
of behavior 100% logical from reasoning point of view - winners are
getting better, losers are weaker and weaker, but it's a design flaw -
simply because makes winner lazy, loser - bored, and whole game -
unimportant. Pretty much the [2] issue.

I think we're discussing if the game has some inherent design feature that decides each matchup the first 5 minutes of the game. If so, and if whoever strikes first wins and wheoever loses a creature first will just keep on losing without of any hope of coming back into the fight, we have a serious problem. That problem is of such a huge extent - if it exist - that it should be easy to locate it when concept testing repeatedly. I think more testing is king here, and would give us much more in the end than trying to prove our arguments in abstract theory. (There I'm probably the most guilty one though)

[3] What I see instead is that the game should be solved by applying a
wining strategy in the endgame, or slowly increasing advantage through
whole middle part of the game.

Correct me on this: You imagine that the game has meta-phases, or should have them.

I don't think it has or should have, at least not as the ORC looks now. It only has temp, but that tempo is per individual player. There is no universal tempo in the game that is equal for both players beyond the resource drop of 1 resource per turn. How you use those resource (quantity vs quality and everything inbetween) is still up to each player.

There is no general or common end phase or middle game or startup: Each deck has it's own tempo. While you may be in your end game, according to what you have stored in your deck, I may be in my mid-game. From an observers perspective one could describe meta-phases afterwards, but only because the observer now knows who won and when.

If we'd want a build up, then some middle game stuff, then some kind of battle royale at the end, we'd need to seriously restructure a lot of stuff and it would priobably be better with a forked ruleset altogether as it has huge implications. (compare this with games like Neuroshima Hex or Legend of the Five Rings). I'm not sure I'm against such a way to play a game, it can perhaps be done in an interesting manner.

What one has to answer is what exactly the players do in such a game if they are not fighting and how they are interacting. This is also related to the games built-in core rule winning conditions and what the game focuses on beyond combat and troops, or, how and what a build-up would entail. ORC is, in that sense, very rudimentary and un-sophisticated. I'd love to see such working alternatives that add strategical depth without making the learning or admin curve too steep.

Finally there is this third thing - paying for attack, that comes in
hand with two following.
You have only one source of resources, this are resource piles.
Big creature comes into play - first, second, third... All those not
only "cost gold", but also take some resources for good and trash it.
And in the end, while you played the third one, you can block attacks,
but you can attack with one of those only (you have to wait for more
resources

Wouldn't that most likely introduce a new variable on each card? And why pay for attack but not for defence? (Simple answer is it would lock / slow down the game very much I guess) I still don't see what it solves, but that will be cleared out via voice.

I think I'd rather see two parallel resource systems instead of one single one as they would maybe(?) offer greater control and less lock-down. Using an action point system achives the same(?) thing as you suggest without lock-down due to us depleting a whole RP even if something costs 1.

Lack of such rash is a serious design flaw we have - simply there will
be no chances of spawning many creatures, because you draw one card
per turn (or two), period. You have too many weak creatures - you will
run out of events needed to eliminate serious monsters.

We currently draw 2 cards per turn and count on a player dropping 1 card per turn as resource.

A layer outspawning another player, in relative terms, when it comes to amount of creatures is easy accomplished even if we have our current setup: If you ar spawning that many cheap creaturs you don't/can't need much resources, hence you get more cards to spawn since you play less resources since you need less. You can also just create 2-3 resourc piles with just 1 resources in each and later upgrade one of them to 2 or 3 resources in it, playing cards that get you more cards or creatures from your deck, or playing cards that create token creatures.

This also all assumes we don't start with resource piles in play, which I think could be interesting to do, save some game time + make startup more strategic with "openings"

[Q_x]

Uhh, lots of reading, and we replied same scheme once again , even the subject is pretty much unchanged...

I think it needs a bit of justification from my side.
We were discussing the ideas some time ago, so there is a bit of context to it - you probably remember that.

First is - this is just a proposal. And I'm not 100% sure of things here, for example immortal creatures may simply ruin the game, but may as well move deck towards event-oriented composition, what makes game a bit more strategic and dynamic.

My intentions were develop certain (desired, I hope) game scheme - where both players are going basically head to head, hurting each other in opportunistic manner, and in the end there should be this waiting in emotions, in a situation where if a player will attack too quickly, he will lose, just because he will be immobilized after the attack.

Solution IMHO is to utilize negative feedback mechanisms (that is acting against player, like paying for attack, discarding resources to play creatures) to help up with balancing the game. I wanted also to make impossible to play by lame strategies like dominating whole table (that is if players are more or less equal). Domination (that is when one of the players is unable to defend and attack reasonably) may occur temporarily, but should be never desired as a winning strategy.

This is all wishful thinking, but I hope it's all more or less worth testing.

[Ravenchild]

I think we first need to do more playtesting. You mention problems that may occur. We should not waste time on things that may not even be a problem.

I suppose the idea behind the imortals is that you want to prevent that a player manages to defeat the entire army of the enemy and then he can just proceed with reducing the enemy's life/influence without any challenge. That doesn't need to happen. We will have cards like "Donations for recovery" which will help a player to regain strength. There can be other defensive cards that will cause trouble for the attacker. Even though WTactics is very unit-centric, there are some spell cards that have a wider effect that can nullify the advantage of an attacker.

[Q_x]

I completely agree on more playtesting. Those problems exist though, are real, and we both, that is snow and I, saw what we saw when we tested stuff long time ago.

I insisted on sandboxing client that would make easy to playtest anything in "as it is" stage and see the results within minutes, but no one wanted to write it, so I guess whole team now have to wait for me making "officiall" and "totally ready for everything" cards, and since this is exactly the thing I do for living - I simply hate doing it and I'm really lazy about it. It's not hard, just gives me negative pleasure.

But I know what I've seen last time: more and more cards in the piles and pretty much constant amount of creatures on the table, with one side visibly stronger than the other, and the other - without any real opportunity to fight - that was after like 20 minutes... I think the deck composed of 80%-90% of creatures is pretty much the winning one (rash model), just to illustrate current problem once more.

This is serious flaw, part of it on our side (not inventing good spells and events back then), and partially because of this are the creatures one needs to fight, and every time 1/3 of creatures involved in fighting dies. Hence immortality (just losing a turn to regroup) came to my mind, and a real cost, not only temporal occupation of a resource (come on, how many creatures one is expected to play per turn? more than one? what is the cost then? not being able to do what? if a player draws just one or two cards per turn, and he has two resource piles, how many will he play in one turn?)

Problem is the software approach of small steps will not work in the world of rules, cause no one will playtest, change, re-typeset, balance and invent new cards, spending thousands of hours just to make the game better, time after time, "small change" after "small change". We may make our rule set transgress from good perfect by small steps, but is what we have really good? I can say I suppose it will make us more trouble in the future, due to balancing and inventing cards that will have to cover some design flaws in the ruleset.

This, along with my lack of ability to convince snowdrop to anything in terms of rules, will be leading to me saying "I told you so" way more often that I would want.

Problem is we should have desired game model first and rule set afterwards - and now I feel like it's quite the opposite - we have some rules and cards, we say "game should be quick and fruity" yet how should good game looks is nowhere written throughly.
How demanding it should be?
How much forward player should be able to plan?
What kind of events should lead to victory?
What deck can be described as typical?
How long should a particular game be winnable by both players if their experience and skill is comparable?
What kind of things should result in lose?
What possible endgame solutions should come into our focus when designing factions?
A strategy consisting of one, two or three turns should be developed to take this last 30% of influence with his final blow?
Or maybe no final blow and just biting each other with one or two cards in hand, praying for creatures to be drawn to hit a tiny bit harder?
How many cards would that final blow need? How many creatures in play? Utilized resources?

Now go and playtest and tell me how it went, I've seen enough. Just take this 80% of creatures into your deck (and no, it's not because of lack of good events solely)