Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Quote from: ChristianSoldier on September 08, 2013, 02:47:42 PM

Quote from: jbeers285 on September 08, 2013, 06:44:03 AM

Those sound like really good ideas to me, I love the sins and prayers idea. However those ideas seem to contradict your though on avoiding complex cards in this new set.

I actually thought about the complexity issue. I don't believe that complexity is a bad thing, but too much will make it very difficult for new players to get into the game and therefore we should monitor the complexity and in sets with rarity, keep the commons less complex than the higher rarity. I'm also not just talking about the next set, I'm talking about the general future of the game, and I don't really want either my set ideas to be the next set, but they are ideas for a future Redemption set.

Except, if all the rare ultra-rare cards are complex why would a new player be excited to open up packs if they only get the common cards bc the others are to difficult for them to understand.

The problem isn't with a few complex cards, the problem happens when most of the cards are complex and the players get overwhelmed with them. So if you have the complex cards at higher rarity it will limit the complexity a new player will see in their early days as a player, therefore slowly introducing them to the complexity of the game rather than pushing them into it right from the start. Since new players collection will be primarily commons and uncommons with only a few rares.

Here is what I am getting at

As a new player lets say you don't understand what the ace of spades does but it's the most rare card. 

Why would you want to buy tons of packs to get a bunch of copies of the 4 of clubs? You won't.  If you want to sell more packs to experienced and new players the ace of spades needs be understood and desired by all.

The issue isn't that a new player can't understand the card at all, because that to me is a sign of bad design, but since complexity is cumulative, the more cards that are complex the higher the total complexity of the game.

Primary complexity issues are not from inability of a player to understand an individual card, but inability to figure out complex situations that come up during games. Now if a new player only has a few complex cards (due to higher rarities) strange situations will be much more rare than if any card can have a similar complexity (if rarity has nothing to do with complexity). I'm also not suggesting that every rare card has to be really complex or that every common card has to be simple, but if we keep commons mostly simple, it will be easier for new players get into the game.

Essentially I'm saying that we should make sure that new player get eased into the game while also allowing veteran players to get the cards they want.

If you are curious I'm getting much of my information from a few Magic the Gathering articles on how they design their game to keep it accessible to new players and fun for veterans.

I always hate it when people talk about Magic design compared to Redemption.

Simple abilities tend to be broad, and thus powerful. (Or conversely limited and thus weak)

Magic can combat broad powerful abilities by having large mana costs attached.

Simple (read powerful) abilities in Redemption have no such check, thus we tend to balance them by attaching conditions, which in turn makes them more complicated.

I actually agree with this to some extent. But I don't think conditions necessarily add complexity. An ability like "If used by a 1 Samuel Warrior class hero discard a warrior class evil character" isn't really any more complicated than "Discard an evil character" but it is much more limited. You are functionally doing the same thing in both cases, just in one case you have a couple of conditions attached to it that most people will understand.

Maybe I'm wrong about the complexity on cards being an issue. Since there are very few cards that I would consider too complex in and of themselves. It's the interaction that causes most complexity issues. And I would never want to eliminate complexity, just move it around.

And to Red Dragon Thorn, just because Magic is a different game doesn't mean we can't learn from them, the specific article was explaining how Wizards had an issue (lack of new players), them finding the problem (complexity creep) and trying to solve it (there were actually several things, the most applicative to Redemption was move complex cards to higher rarities, but other things they did was limit new keywords in blocks (but that might be irrelevant unless we introduce set rotation, and making sure that keywords weren't too complicated (the reminder text had to be able to fit on the cards)) Now I understand that Redemption is a different game with different needs, but if complexity creep is making it harder for new players to get into it, I would suggest that we look into finding ways to limit it, while still keeping the game interesting to veterans. Perhaps my ideas won't work, but if we ignore the problem it's not going to go away.

Maybe complexity creep isn't the issue at all, but most of what I'm seeing on this topic is people talking about this theme needing a boost or that ability needs nerfing, and while that may be true, I don't think that is the way to approach game design. I think we need to approach it from a place of, how to we make sure the game will be healthy in 5 years or 10 years?

I don't care what the card says, as long as it is shiny. 

Cactus should make a Haman's Plot reprint that is foil. Then it would be almost impossible to rip in half.

Would inability to rip in half fall under "do as much as you can"?