I'm curious about the balancing process used when creating cards. For a game like Magic: the Gathering, they've got a natural balancing mechanism built into each card where the more powerful a card is the more mana it costs to cast. There's nothing like that in SotM. Did you guys come up with some kind of internal balancing mechanism, like saying that a card that deals 1 damage to 2 targets is a "2 point card" while a card that lets you draw 3 additional card is a "1 point" card, and then you make sure that each hero's deck has about the same number of points of cards in it? Or is a more seat-of-the-pants process?
Ten individual decks balanced against each other as well as balanced against four separate villain decks (for now. the number will be ever-growing) is quite a feat. How will you manage to maintain that going forward, as each new card and deck needs to be balanced against everything that came before it?
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
What I've found while counting some of the hero deck is that each one (which I actually counted) had a total of 15 different cards, and were split between two, three, and four cards each. It appears the more "common" type cards are four each, and the more "rare" type cards are two each. I haven't studied the villain or environment decks yet.
Do good, I? No! Evil anon I deliver, I maim nine more hero men in Miami, sanitary sword a-tuck, carol I. Lo! Rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero men in Saginaw. Reviled I, Nona, live on. I do... o, God!
I was referring more to the relative power of each card, not necessarily the frequency they appear in a deck. I'm just curious to hear if the process is just "make up some cards and then play them a lot to see if they feel right", or if there's more structure to how they decide if a card is too powerful or not powerful enough when compared to the other 500 cards (for now) in the game.
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
The frequency of the card in the deck is actually directly determined by its power in most cases, that's primarily how its balanced. Doing away with resources was one of our initial design principles because we wanted you to have the option of playing any card in your hand at any time. Now certainly some cards are situational in their usefulness, but you have the ability to play any card at any time. Another part of balancing is adding additional costs for using extra-powerful cards, such as with many of Fanatic's cards. She can deal out some awesome damage, but will go down pretty quick if you're not careful. So those are our basic rules as far as designing, but beyond that we playtest every character with every other character.
Almost always we'll come up with the flavor of the deck first. We'll say "Ok, who is this person? What are their powers? What is their personality? Do they have anything in their mundane life that transfers to battle?" Then we'll bust out a list of things we'd like to see included in the deck, then break it down one card at a time.
Well, I can say that there's a good deal more structure than that to how things are finalized, but card and power availability are the primary balancing methods. I've heard people complain that they'd like to play more than one card / use more than one power per turn - and don't we all? But that's how the balance works. In a game with resources, like Magic, you can play as many cards as you can pay for, and that works. But since there are no resources in this game, availability and frequency of use are the limiting factors. High damage should be reserved for cards that can't be doubled up on, at least, not easily. Which is why the bulk of Tachyon's cards do very low damage - she has the greatest potential to play the most cards per turn, and rightly so. The Wraith and Legacy can most easily use multiple powers per turn, so they're powers are a bit more spread out. Now, with the aid of Fanatic, ANY hero could use an additional power per turn, but they pay a bit of a price to do so. Which is the third part of our balance: your health. The actions of playing cards and using powers are depending on card draw, limited card play, availability and frequency of use, and detriment to the heroes themselves.
And then TONS of playtesting. Unsurprisingly, even more so with the Rook City decks, as they have to mesh well with everything already in Sentinels of the Multiverse. Would you be surprised to hear that we're already well into playtesting the pre-alpha version of the expansion? It's very exciting.
"Your goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love hearing about the design process! Also, can't help noting that you just "leaked" the name Rook City. Sounds very...ominous to me.
So then, if the rarity of the cards within the 40-card deck is the primary method of balancing the power of each card, do you then say that each deck should have one Power Level 10 card, two Power Level 8 cards, two 7s, four 6s, etc., at which point the art of it becomes more about deciding which cards fit which Power Level (which opens up the idea that theoretically, a Legacy card that's Power Level 5 should be comparable in power to a Wraith card that's Power Level 5)? Or is the entire thing more of an art than that and you don't make those kinds of distinctions when deciding the contents of a new deck?
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
Legacy's power level is over 9,000.
But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the designers were more concerned about balancing the heroes against the villans than they were about balancing them against each other. Sure you don't want one hero to completely outshine the others, but since it's not a PvP game, the most important thing is to make sure that each hero contributes to the team in a meaningful way.
"He robbed from the rich and he-
gave to the poor.
Stood up to the Man and he-
gave him what for.
Our love for him now,
aint hard to explain,
the hero of Canton,
the man they call "Jayne""
It is more of an art, we'll basically estimate what we think a card should do, then in playtesting decide "Oh, that's way over-powered," or "This hero's a pushover." We're much better at estimating now, but in the initial set, it yielded an entire re-write of Absolute Zero very nearly from the ground up. While our focus is definitely how the heroes fare against the villains, we do try them with every other hero, as team dynamics are still a crucial component of the game.
OK, last follow-up question (probably): should we assume that once you release a hero's deck, it's finished for all time and there will never be expansions that add a few cards to the hero decks to spice them up or change them, since adding cards to a deck will alter the frequency with which any of the cards in the deck come out? I'm not sure how much adding two or three new cards to a new 40-card deck would actually change how a deck feels to play, but it sounds like once a 40-card deck is balanced against itself to your satisfaction, that you probably wouldn't want to mess with it after that.
Also, it sounds safe to say that there will never be a situation where players will be allowed to build their own decks or decide what cards to include/add/remove from a deck since the cards aren't balanced against themselves, meaning that it would be simple for a player to load up a deck with too many overpowered cards.
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
I think the idea of creating an "alternate deck" would be interesting; say, in Expansion 3, an alternate Wraith deck is released, allowing Wraith to play with her original deck, or her new alternate deck (possibly releasing an alternate Wraith as well, to allow the alternate deck to be played without the base game, and allowing for 4 different combinations of Wraith, or something)
Do good, I? No! Evil anon I deliver, I maim nine more hero men in Miami, sanitary sword a-tuck, carol I. Lo! Rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero men in Saginaw. Reviled I, Nona, live on. I do... o, God!
I don't know if it's been mentioned on the forums yet or not, but I know that, at least currently, the creators have stated that each deck is in its final state. The only changes might be if they throw in some errata'd replacement cards in with the expansion box or sell an errata pack or something.
See the way my body's glowing? Yeah, a lot of people can't do that.
Ryan's correct, each hero is pretty much complete when we release them. The way we change it up is with the promo cards - the alternate heroes. Anyone who's used the alternate Legacy con-exclusive card will tell you it substantially changes how that deck is played, and we intend on doing more of that in the future.
Personally, I hope those "change up" cards don't remain con-exclusive. It's nice that conventioneers get something special I suppose, but I have to imagine that they make up a minute percentage of the people who play the game overall. Seems like if the con-exclusive cards are actually something special, you'd want to get them into the hands of the majority of people who play your game, not the <1% of them who walked up to your booth at a convention. :)
Maybe you could consider making the con-exclusive cards special with a "Dragon*con 2011!!!!" foil badge on them or something but then releasing the cards in an expansion so that everyone else could experience them too.
Even better, if we're just talking about hero cards and not the decks, then you can just post the card and the art on your forums and I can make my own oversized version of it. Perfect! :)
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
Will there be alt villain character cards as well as alt hero character cards?
Do good, I? No! Evil anon I deliver, I maim nine more hero men in Miami, sanitary sword a-tuck, carol I. Lo! Rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero men in Saginaw. Reviled I, Nona, live on. I do... o, God!
I personally would like to see alternate Villain cards with different win conditions. Like Baron Blade with a different doomsday device or Grand Warlord Voss with a different invasion plan or something like that.
The Myth, The Legend, The Dream. You can't escape The Conscience!
That'd be fantastic! Even if they used the same decks as always, having five different Barons to choose from when you're starting up a game, each with a slightly different villainous caper we had to foil, would be wonderful. And it would only involve adding a handful of cards to an expansion, so there's no reason not to do this great idea. Bring it on! :D
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
I like that. Maybe Baron Blade could have an assassination card, where Legacy has to be played, and if he dies, game over.
Poop can wait, Time Crisis is now!
Oooh, that's a great idea too.
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
My comment on the thread here
http://greaterthangames.info/forum/index.php/topic,171.0.html
concerns the issue of card balance, and suggests an alternate approach to deck design/balance that might be helpful for adding even more variability to future expansions.