Promised Land Duel Cards - The Thread

[nitnit]

A continuation of the last thread, this time it's no longer to check guild interest level. This is the thread where I will slowly leak details of the card game I am designing until I launch it.


Here is the current rundown


- Game will be a combination of traditional "battling" collectible card games and strategy games. That is to say that there will be no luck involved, so no card drawing, no random chance events, just pure deck building and playing skill.

- Game will revolve around defeating the enemy leader and keeping your leader alive. This can be achieved by building structures, summoning troops, calling in allies, casting powerful spells, and using items. It will be possible to be successful with a deck that uses all of these things, or primarily one or two.

- Cards will be purchased with "guild activity points". The best way to earn these is to simply post, but they can also be earned by winning guild sanctioned contests. I have decided against using gold as a mean of earning points to avoid any possible ToS conflicts since the card game is using copyrighted stuff.

- Cards that are common/uncommon can be traded as freely as desired. If you really want you can give away hundreds of common/uncommon cards. Rare cards and guild activity points however will be monitored. That is to say you may not give all of your points to someone, or trade them your rares for 1 point. (unless you own both gaia accounts). Fair, or nearly fair trades are perfectly fine and heavily encouraged. There may be a few exceptions to this rule (If you want to give a premade deck to a friend so he/she can join in the fun). Under no circumstance are you allowed to sell the cards for gaia gold for the aforementioned reason.


Well nitnit, that sounds cool, but how does this help out the guild?

Easy. If this takes off, then people already in the guild who pick it up will want to stick around for future sets/battling people/events, and will want to post and be active to gain more points to get more cards.

Not to mention, if it gets popular and structured enough, it may draw in new people entirely on its own.





Latest announcements regarding the game:

- I will be changing the currency system. I'm running into two problems. The first is leaders who come from games that don't have many cards. The second is that it's encouraging decks that "make themselves" way too much.

While I don't want someone who stacks a bunch of bowser minions in their bowser deck to be any weaker than someone who uses a broad spectrum of crazy stuff with good synergy, I don't want to only make said bowser deck viable.

The current plan in my mind right now is to have one nearly universal currency (Probably "Gold") which can build most things, and then have specialized currencies that can be created for specialized units, or summoning them at a lower cost.

For example (remember, these are just random numbers for this example, not actual numbers set in stone) Bowser might create 100 Gold and 25 coins every turn. If he wants to summon a Goomba, he can either pay 25 coins, or 50 gold. Since the exchange rate for Gold --> Coins = 1/1, it's economically better to pay with coins.

Following this, Bowser, in theory, can summon a Goomba with his 25 coins, then spend the 100 coins to build a Toad House, which would give him 50 coins per turn income. Alternatively, he could use that 100 gold to set up an exchange booth, or summon a unit/item/whatever from a totally different game.

If you haven't been reading this carefully, it sounds complicated. Once you see it in practice, it'll add a lot of strategy. (I think)

Taking this one step futher, there will be special currencies required for certain cards. For example, if you want to build a Hydralisk from Starcraft, you'll need Vespene Gas, just like in Starcraft. This could be obtained from a Vespene Mine, an exchanger, or other various means of generating Vespene Gas. This will allow for the player to decide whether he wants to spend the time/deck space generating special materials for arguably more powerful/efficient cards, or if he wants to focus on base gold.




Obviously a lot of this won't be possible to truly know until the game is out and playtested. After about a month of people creating different decks and battling it out, it'll be easy to see what strategies are dominant, and build future sets that help offset this dominance.  

[nitnit]

Set Information


The first set will be called Core Set 1 - Genesis. It will be a large set with somewhere between 120-160 cards. Booster packs will cost 100 guild points. There may be a starter deck that comes with it. It will be heavily Nintendo centric, but there will be a few non Nintendo cards. Every pack will have a 50% chance of receiving a Leader card to help people get leaders and build decks more quickly.


The first expansion set will deal with either space wars or machines, maybe both. It will have far fewer Nintendo cards than the first, but Nintendo cards will probably still have a fairly strong showing. The expansion will be smaller than the first core set, and will come out after I see what strategies work well in with the core set's cards. It will most likely have a lot of cards from Starcraft, Halo, and Star Fox.  

[nitnit]

Spoiled Cards


Later in production I will put whatever cards I feel like spoiling for you guys to discuss / give feedback on up here.



 

[Crimson Hagane]

*watches thread*

*INTENTLY*  

[Jonnnn]

I declare myself as champion. I'm the king of games.  

[nitnit]

First spoiler up. Keep in mind that the card's physical design is completely tentative on if someone who's actually good at that sort of thing offers his/her help, and if I come up with a better design.

The dragon balls indicate rarity (They will only be present on rare cards), and the card is missing a symbol for core set 1 (since I havent decided on a symbol for the set)

There will also be written text on a thread readily available for people who don't want to load and copy paste images.



As for the card itself, this is tor. He has above average health, average income, and average deck size. He is a pretty rare card, as he has the unique ability to literally just wipe the opponent's field after 10 turns (very few things will have 500 health...). To borrow a term from MTG, Tor would be really good in a control deck.

Basic Strategies for Using Tor:

- Play defensively until 10 turns are up, then clear the board and attack with full force
- Build deck with Komato technology that boosts his energy faster


Basic Strategies for facing Tor:

- Rush him, use anti defensive cards
- Find a way to drain his energy
- Use cards that have the ability to retreat, or cards that allow you to retract your cards.  

[darkslasherX]

Nice. Looking forward to more spoiled cards.  

[Crimson Hagane]

Gameplay factor of Tor: Not too shabby.

Cosmetic factor of the card: Yeah, you need to hire a different artist.  

[nitnit]

Want to offer your own artistic expertise? Serious question there.

I'm not "hiring" anyone, it's a free game. I whipped up the card in MS paint. Originally there wasn't going to any art, I decided to be nice. Seriously though, the art of the card hardly matters, I honestly don't envision many players copy pasting every single card when they play. It's more of a visual guide for what the character looks like.

But yeah, I'm looking for game design critique, and anyone who wants to offer their services for free, let me know.  

[Crimson Hagane]

I suppose I could create a card template, and pictures and text could be inserted on the template to make the cards.  

[nitnit]

That'd be good, PM me or post up here whatever templates you design  

[Crimson Hagane]

Sorry that I've left you hanging around on that template, Nit. I've been dealing with college and playing with this free trial of RPG Maker VX recently. I haven't kicked myself into making that template at all. I don't really know if it'll be done soon, honestly.  

[nitnit]

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

Pretty much sums up our time scales.