Forum-based TCG/board game in need of feedback

[thade]

you have my sword! I'm beginning to branch into other languages, if it needs to be digitalized, we might be able to brainstorm something up.

[knolli]

Maybe going againt Magic would be a bit too ambitious. But it surely wouldn't hurt to get some inspiration there.

Since the game will feature a bord so we could even implement brikwars there for greater mayham Imagine the characters you summon to be minifigs. At least you could represent them with minifigs. And since it is Brikwars, we could put in some jokes here and there. Like "The needlessly big Fireball" or the anchient death shooting artefact called "The Blaster".

To totally go overboard, we can even use the brikwars rules and dice for what happens on the board while still playing a trading card game. Discuss.

[Olothontor]

Maybe going againt Magic would be a bit too ambitious. But it surely wouldn't hurt to get some inspiration there.

Since the game will feature a bord so we could even implement brikwars there for greater mayham Imagine the characters you summon to be minifigs. At least you could represent them with minifigs. And since it is Brikwars, we could put in some jokes here and there. Like "The needlessly big Fireball" or the anchient death shooting artefact called "The Blaster".

To totally go overboard, we can even use the brikwars rules and dice for what happens on the board while still playing a trading card game. Discuss.

No discussion needed, Knolli. Rayhawk is stealing my thunder, haha.

I'll keep developing this, but it may be kindof shot at this point.

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If this is meant to be a forum game, so it will take place in thready and each turn will be posted for everyone to read, just like Role to Dodge and all the others, right?
Then how do you ceep your hand secret from your opponent?
Using hidden trap cards like in Yu-Gi-Oh should work fine.

Well, I was actually thinking that each Player's hand would be PM'd to them each turn, and then the results of everyone's orders would be posted, a la a forum battle. The only hard part being teamwork between the team members; trying to coordinate a 3-piece defense/assault would be frustratingly slow via PMs alone.

::enchantment rant::

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I'll mess with it a bit. I may take out "Counters" and lump them into a more generalized "Action" card.

So you'll have "Counter Action" for cards that negate the effects of a specific class ability or specific card type, "Teamwork Action" for cards that initiate an effect that remains in play as long as the card does (a la Enchantments from M:TG), etc.

Your enchantment ideas sound good, knolli, I may steal a few and certainly make more of my own.

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:twisted:
you have my sword! I'm beginning to branch into other languages, if it needs to be digitalized, we might be able to brainstorm something up.

Awesome, let me know if any large chunks of free time develop for you. We can get started at your discretion.

Also make sure you look up how to code in server capability or some other form of multiplayer capability. It'll be important for this.

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You're welcome!

Like knolli, I've been playing Magic for several years now and can help with potential card strength if you need it.

Sounds good, I'll keep this thread updated as I find the time to make new cards (I'll probably lay them out in a text format first for approval/dismissal, and then compile all of the accepted cards and actually assemble the sprites only for those).

[Ross_Varn]

Rayhawk is stealing my thunder, haha. I'll keep developing this, but it may be kindof shot at this point.

Screw that, mate, that just means I need to get a piece of this!

Give me a bit to warm up again, summer break doesn't do wonders for the brainstorming gaming portion of the brain, apparently...

Rereading!

[Olothontor]

Screw that, mate, that just means I need to get a piece of this!

Give me a bit to warm up again, summer break doesn't do wonders for the brainstorming gaming portion of the brain, apparently...

Rereading!

Haha. Tear into it mate, and let me know all of your thoughts. Welcome aboard.

EDIT: A quick thought on boosters.

It could be possible to set it up so that there are "Goals" for each map, and each team gets Booster packs distributed amongst them for each Goal they accomplish over the course of the game.

So, just as an example: Team Defeat and Team Victory are playing on a map. Team Victory has a Character or two sitting on a Gold Mine collecting money to buy some cards next turn, and reaches [x significant amount of gold]. The map has a Goal achievement for that gold amount, and so all three of Team Victory's members receive a PM'd random booster pack.
At the same time, Team Defeat manages to kill a certain number of the neutral Creatures on the field, and also receives boosters based on the map's Goal regarding those creatures.

Goals could be custom built to fit maps (if I can, I'll release a sort of map-making tutorial so that you guys aren't limited to the handful of maps that I make to begin with). However, there should only be so many Goals on any given map, so that there's still some competition for the Teams to take Goals X-Z before the other Team accomplishes them first. The other thing I should mention is that in a match, no matter the Map, the winning Team also receives another set of Booster packs.

This way makes the game a bit less linear by adding more things for the Players to accomplish; if your only plan walking into the game is to defeat the other Team, then you probably won't get too many Booster packs in the process. The downside is that this might prolong the game, as Teams try to achieve as many Boosters as possible before finishing the game.

Let me know your thoughts.

EDIT II: Mocked up an example of a Team Haven. The Decks are visible on the map, and by standing on the color-coded tiles in front of them, you deal damage. I tried to also make it a defensible fallback position for that team, with bottlenecks and etc.

And decorative lava. Very important.



Hmm, managed to forget some form of Team designation, so that Players don't confuse the Havens.

[Olothontor]

Another random thought: maybe an experience system for Characters and Unique Characters?

Also, in case anyone missed it, look at my last post.

[knolli]

Don't make the bottlenecks too small. In that map I'd place four strong characters in a v-formation behind the bottleneck to the right so that any attacker will have to defeat at least two opponents. That will be a tough nut to crack. Especially if the defenders are strong tanks supported by ranged units and healers.
What are the rules for movement? Can your characters pass fields that are occupied by allied chars or do they have to move around them? Will there be something like a zone of control that enemies can't pass ? And a flanking ability that allowes rogues to ignore these zones?

I like the idea of experience system, but you have to keep it really simple like 3 levels maximum and only for selected characters. Othewise it will become too complex and prolong the game unneccessarily. You already make me think of "Battle for Wesnoth".

[Olothontor]

Don't make the bottlenecks too small. In that map I'd place four strong characters in a v-formation behind the bottleneck to the right so that any attacker will have to defeat at least two opponents. That will be a tough nut to crack. Especially if the defenders are strong tanks supported by ranged units and healers.

Right, but then you're using most of your resources for defense rather than having them attack, so there's definitely a balance to it. Plus, if you have all of your units back there, that means that all of the other Team's Characters are most likely assaulting you. I'm not too worried about the bottlenecks being really imbalanced.

What are the rules for movement? Can your characters pass fields that are occupied by allied chars or do they have to move around them? Will there be something like a zone of control that enemies can't pass ? And a flanking ability that allows rogues to ignore these zones?

Movement is a Character stat, so they can move each turn up to a number of tiles equal to that stat. Zone of control will play a role, and you will be able to move friendly Characters through allied spaces so long as they don't end their turn in the same space as another Character.

I might consider that Rogue ability, it may be a Global Action card in the Rogue deck.

I like the idea of experience system, but you have to keep it really simple like 3 levels maximum and only for selected characters. Otherwise it will become too complex and prolong the game unnecessarily. You already make me think of "Battle for Wesnoth".

I was thinking along the lines of "after x number of kills, gain a +1 to a chosen stat," and that could happen only so many times over the course of a Match.

[Olothontor]

Scrapped the old PDO tiles and remade them with a bit less fail this time.

EDIT: Renewed the Haven example and made it so that there's only a one-tile bottleneck on either side of the entrance.

[Zupponn]

You have some mighty fine spriting/tiling abilities there.

[knolli]

Are you planning to make individual sprites for each and any single character/creature? There will be hundreds of different creatures for each class, so this is not recommended.

The warrior guy looks like Belkar

Neutral creatures: Gold source and free XP. And cannon fodder. With special cards you could get control over them until end of turn or end of the game. Many new possibilities. Since they are scattered everywhere this could be a fast way to claim gold mines early or make a pre-emptive strike at your opponent while he is still building his forces.

[Olothontor]

Are you planning to make individual sprites for each and any single character/creature? There will be hundreds of different creatures for each class, so this is not recommended.

Will there really? I was unaware of this. How come?

In my mind, each Deck only has so many creatures in it, and it certainly won't be hundreds. Besides, Character, Target, and Equipment cards need card art! Although I may try to actually do some icons a la Royal Blood, Warcraft and Warcraft II, and etc, rather than just using art from the game board and pieces.

Neutral creatures: Gold source and free XP. And cannon fodder. With special cards you could get control over them until end of turn or end of the game. Many new possibilities. Since they are scattered everywhere this could be a fast way to claim gold mines early or make a pre-emptive strike at your opponent while he is still building his forces.

Definitely doable.

You have some mighty fine spriting/tiling abilities there.

Why, thank you.

[knolli]

Are you planning to make individual sprites for each and any single character/creature? There will be hundreds of different creatures for each class, so this is not recommended.

Will there really? I was unaware of this. How come?

In my mind, each Deck only has so many creatures in it, and it certainly won't be hundreds. Besides, Character, Target, and Equipment cards need card art! Although I may try to actually do some icons a la Royal Blood, Warcraft and Warcraft II, and etc, rather than just using art from the game board and pieces.

This is a trading card game, so a major part of the game will be to collect boosters and optimize your deck. Even if only five different characters are used per deck in the end, you want to select them from a far greater pool. If there is nothing to collect, there is no point in trading.
You only need to make small variations in the stats to get a new card. And you still havn't made use of special abilities. And since there are five classes of characters right now if I am not mistaken, you can multiply that number by rougly 2.5, because you may want similar card in different colors. That way you'll end up with a huge number of characters pretty soon.

[Olothontor]

Are you planning to make individual sprites for each and any single character/creature? There will be hundreds of different creatures for each class, so this is not recommended.

Will there really? I was unaware of this. How come?

In my mind, each Deck only has so many creatures in it, and it certainly won't be hundreds. Besides, Character, Target, and Equipment cards need card art! Although I may try to actually do some icons a la Royal Blood, Warcraft and Warcraft II, and etc, rather than just using art from the game board and pieces.

This is a trading card game, so a major part of the game will be to collect boosters and optimize your deck. Even if only five different characters are used per deck in the end, you want to select them from a far greater pool. If there is nothing to collect, there is no point in trading.
You only need to make small variations in the stats to get a new card. And you still haven't made use of special abilities. And since there are five classes of characters right now if I am not mistaken, you can multiply that number by roughly 2.5, because you may want similar card in different colors. That way you'll end up with a huge number of characters pretty soon.

I think you may be blowing this slightly out of proportion. For one thing, the focus is not on the Characters; they're just grunts. Think like a Tower Defense game.

Next, there are only three classes (Warrior, Wizard, Rogue), with maybe 2 or 3 appended subclasses (A Magus would be a Wizard Character, for example). There'll be, at most, a dozen different Characters. That's about it.

No, the focus is on the actions that Characters and Unique Characters can take. A Player will most likely want his or her Deck to be mainly Targets or Actions, with some Characters and a few Equipment cards. The idea is not to swarm (although there will probably be a swarm-style Deck based around reviving dead Characters), it's to use your cards wisely to get what Characters you have to the other Team's Haven.

[knolli]

As I said, it is one thing to have a given number of character cards in your deck. It is a totally different thing to have a big pool of cards (the sum of every card you collected) where you choose your deck from. What I said about characters applies to any other type of card, too.
When I still played MTG, I spent nearly as much time preparing my deck as I spent playing. And do make a good costumized deck you need a big pool. A collection of 1000 cards (including doubles) is small for most TCGs.

When building your deck most of the time it's: "Tam is strong, but Tim is faster. And Tom has this neat ability, but lacks defense. ..I think I will put Tod in my deck, because he goes well with the [other card]",
or: "The Bloodthirsty Axe does the most damage, but the Swift Daggers also improves the speed stat. Or should I put the Scythe of Decapitation in my deck? It adds the [special ability], but the initial bonus is small. No, I will use the Greatsword of Legends that gives additional bonus when equipted to a [specific character]."

That's why you need to create ten times more cards than are actually used for a game. And if you are planning to make individual sprites for Tam, Tim, Tom and Tod there is much work waiting for you. And maybe they will never be selected for a game.