Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Also, if redemption wasn't christian I wouldn't play it, simply because it is not as appealing as Pokemon or Magic.

From a gameplay standpoint, I firmly believe that Redemption can hang with the best of them.  But the crux of the issue is other TCGs offer so many more reasons to play than Redemption.

From a gameplay standpoint, I firmly believe that Redemption can hang with the best of them.  But the crux of the issue is other TCGs offer so many more reasons to play than Redemption.
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Like what?

Besides the obvious reasons (religion and such) why would someone want to play MTG or Pokémon more than redemption?

Besides the obvious reasons (religion and such) why would someone want to play MTG or Pokémon more than redemption?

JSB just answered that question for you. Pokemon and Magic offer more tournaments, more people, more releases, better quality control, and a chance to win prizes that are worthwhile. Redemption offers one slow message board that grows less and less active as time goes on. This becomes something of a vicious cycle, as I'm currently pretty excited about Redemption, but it doesn't matter because nobody else is.

Too many cards in Redemption with horrible balancing issues. No appropriate cost system in place. Too many cards that say you can or cant do X. Draw abilities are beyond repair. A win condition heavily dependent upon your opponents draw. A 2 card completely nonrestrictive combo that rewards nearly half of the games win condition. A single game takes far too long than it should (you would think the opposite of a game that draws 3 times faster than normal CCGs). No best 2 of 3. No sideboard or similar function. Top cut after Swiss still not official.

There is a long list of reasons Redemption is far from the top of all the CCGs I have played.

Most of those have nothing to do with the core mechanics of the game (or otherwise aren't necessarily required), and all of them are fixable. The problems don't lie with the gameplay, they lie with poor decision making up to this point, which a reboot would fix. I like the core mechanics, and think they do stand with any of the three big CCGs, the problem is what has been built onto them.

I changed from Pokémon to redemption because it was about the bible and that sounded like a good way to evangelize.

It's easier to go out into their playing field then trying to bring them to you.

Quote from: Master KChief on October 20, 2014, 07:49:44 PM

Too many cards in Redemption with horrible balancing issues. No appropriate cost system in place. Too many cards that say you can or cant do X. Draw abilities are beyond repair. A win condition heavily dependent upon your opponents draw. A 2 card completely nonrestrictive combo that rewards nearly half of the games win condition. A single game takes far too long than it should (you would think the opposite of a game that draws 3 times faster than normal CCGs). No best 2 of 3. No sideboard or similar function. Top cut after Swiss still not official.

There is a long list of reasons Redemption is far from the top of all the CCGs I have played.

Most of those have nothing to do with the core mechanics of the game (or otherwise aren't necessarily required), and all of them are fixable. The problems don't lie with the gameplay, they lie with poor decision making up to this point, which a reboot would fix. I like the core mechanics, and think they do stand with any of the three big CCGs, the problem is what has been built onto them.

This. I don't believe we need a cost system necessarily, just balanced cards.

When I played, I wasn't a big fan of how the rules of Redemption varied from day to day, and from elder to elder on the exact same day.

(And in some cases, varied within the same day with the same elder)

I'm honestly curious what you're exactly proposing to fix if the problem is not a part of the 'core mechanics' or 'gameplay' of the game, or however other avenue you wish to frame the idea.

Reboot without broken cards? 

Quote from: Master KChief on October 21, 2014, 01:03:26 AM

I'm honestly curious what you're exactly proposing to fix if the problem is not a part of the 'core mechanics' or 'gameplay' of the game, or however other avenue you wish to frame the idea.

Reboot without broken cards?

I agree a restart (or set rotation) with the knowledge we know now would certainly help pave the way towards far more balanced cards and hopefully less power creep. But wouldn't simply banning imba cards be a more pragmatic approach and do exactly the same thing? Is there anything else a reboot would further accomplish?

I agree a restart (or set rotation) with the knowledge we know now would certainly help pave the way towards far more balanced cards and hopefully less power creep. But wouldn't simply banning imba cards be a more pragmatic approach and do exactly the same thing? Is there anything else a reboot would further accomplish?

Banning would deal with some issues, but it wouldn't address the power creep, since Cactus's non banning practices led to solve overpowered cards by creating cards which were of similar power, but all over the place. A reboot would allow us to start fresh.

Also a reboot allows a perfect opportunity to rebuild the rules and possibly make improvements to the game as a whole, especially when we don't have one or two badly worded cards for almost every ability type and have to try and make them work.

Finally it would allow the reduction of the brigades down to the original six on each side and give an opportunity to make each brigade more unique and playing different strategies, rather than printing very similar cards in several brigades.

So to summarize a reboot could: Reset the power level to whatever works. Rebuild the rules to create a cleaner, more consistent game and rework the brigades to make the game more interesting. Banning wouldn't really accomplish these unless it was on the level of mass set rotation.

Also, yeah, no dominants in the reboot. Or if you do make dominants, they're consistency cards like "Search your deck for an evil character" and they can only be played during your prep/discard phase.

That makes it only slightly better than a territory class card. The issue with Dominants is that playing them isn't regulated by rules and they can't be responded to. You could make dominants work if you created a priority system (which Redemption needs whether a reboot happens or not) and if you created something like Magic's Stack or Yu-Gi-Oh's chain rule to allow responses.

In fact the inability to respond to opponents abilities is one of Redemption's biggest issues. What is the least fun most people have in a card game? Probably watching your opponent do a bunch of stuff while you can't do anything about it, or as it's often called "Playing Solitaire". In fact I remember several years back how much work the Playtesters and/or rule makers had to do to stop many of those combos that were essentially twenty minutes (or more) of Redemption Solitaire, when the issue is actually one that is inherent in the current system: In Redemption you have to wait until abilities complete before you can respond.

Basically there is no opportunity to insert another ability between an ability activating and an ability resolving. We had to make Special Initiative to counter this basic concept, but if you pay attention you'll notice that the best strategies are based on denying your opponent the opportunity to use Special Initiative, or regular initiative, but that's a different story. The game is it's best when both players can play cards and the winner is decided by who played them best, rather than games being decided by who has the most opportunity to play their cards.

To be fair, MtG had Split Second and it didn't bust the game. I think the main problem with Dominants is the fact you're getting a handful of the most uber powerful abilities in the game that can be played at absolutely anytime at the price tag of zero to the user. The fact every single deck uses the most powerful ones wasn't an indication they are broken decades ago? A stack/chain would benefit Redemption greatly because of the way the game is structured while also taking some much needed power away from Dominants.

An interesting note though is that some CCG's are able to successfully pull off giving a player little to no interaction during another players turn, such as Hearthstone. However, that is intentional as the game puts heavy emphasis on combat and sequencing, whereas Redemptions inability to respond is in most cases a product of poor design on card abilities and does not stem from actual core mechanics.

I agree with this, although I will point out that a handful of mediocre cards with the ability that they can't be responded to isn't the same as an entire based around the concept. I also understand that games can be good without interaction, but like you said, that's if it is built to work that way.

I do think that Redemption's move from a game focused primarily on numbers with occasional special abilities, to focused mostly on special abilities where numbers still regulate the game flow (initiative in battle) but have little impact on the game other than that, has caused the game many problems, because rather than adding a stack, they just made exceptions to handle things (Interrupt and Negate can respond to Special Abilities in some cases).

If a reboot were to happen, I would really hope improving Special Ability interaction would be part of the reboot, possibly even retooling how initiative works.

I'm honestly curious what you're exactly proposing to fix if the problem is not a part of the 'core mechanics' or 'gameplay' of the game, or however other avenue you wish to frame the idea.

Too many cards in Redemption with horrible balancing issues. No appropriate cost system in place. Too many cards that say you can or cant do X. Draw abilities are beyond repair. A win condition heavily dependent upon your opponents draw. A 2 card completely nonrestrictive combo that rewards nearly half of the games win condition. A single game takes far too long than it should (you would think the opposite of a game that draws 3 times faster than normal CCGs). No best 2 of 3. No sideboard or similar function. Top cut after Swiss still not official.

Anything involving the current cards available can be fixed in a reboot. I don't believe that a cost system is really necessary, long as long playtesting is done more carefully, cards that are overpowered are banned (or changed, since in my dream world a reboot would be entirely online), and set rotation was implemented. The way Lost Souls currently function is obviously a huge problem, but that can be fixed by either having a much higher Lost Soul ratio in decks or Lost Souls simply start in the Land of Bondage (probably the latter).

I don't really have a problem with SoG/NJ in and of themselves. Yes, the two of them satisfy almost half the game's win condition in T1, but the game has been structured around that fact. As you point, many games last way too long even with them. On top of that, an obvious problem is that the existence of them essentially makes some level of speed a requirement in many decks. I think dominants are a game mechanic that needs to be eliminated anyway, so I think that problem will take care of itself. With a few rule tweaks (can't rescue on the first turn, play to 3, no SoG), the amount of time needed to play should go down immensely, which will then allow for best two out of three, sideboarding, etc. Top Cut is also more or less official at this point. Bany has become a huge believer in it, as have most of the Elders. At this point, I think it's safe to say that Top Cut is here to stay.