"BROKEN." What does it mean?

[Deleted]

Oh, and Darklord...I do relate a great deal to your standards of broken or whatnot. My team and I were very first inclined the same way, meaning that we were bothered that at first it seemed that every deck played RoTA, Biblio, Vorex, Slavedriver, Sneaky Snyder, Sworn Defender, Goblin Archer...

...however, we've settled down a bit. While it is true that the vast majority of top decks employ most or all of these cards, it is in my belief there is still sufficient diversity to satisfy and not 86 this list. My biggest concern lately actually has been Lady P.

Either way, if the game were to adopt a new face again, I would be down with it. You must understand, we were at first rescued from a world with Rings on Vorexes and time-wasting Walls...I think things are a little smoother now...it's getting there...

[darklord]

Q, I don't know if the game is broken. One or two cards I've seen seem broken, but I own a grand total of two advanced play decks. So, I'm not here nay saying M.E. I thought it was quite fun actually or I wouldn't post on the boards. I enjoyed having the resources built into the cards. It meant that I was a lot happier to see each card. In Magic the Gathering about 1/3 to 1/2 of my cards would have been land, which is a lot less exciting to draw. The game has a good premise overall, I think.

I do suspect, however, from seeing some deck lists online that some of the cards are not getting playtested enough and that diversity is not high enough. I can't say that for sure. You would be a better judge about that than me.

The reason I put our company's working definition of "broken" out there, is that it's a very different paradigm from what Keith posted. Ours is a player-oriented paradigm. You might agree that card X or Y can't win a game by itself, but if everyone feels the need to play one, well it limits diversity. Players want to see different things in a CCG. When everyone plays the same card pool it makes you wonder why you bothered to collect all the cards.

I remember, Overpower, for example. It had like 200+ characters (if you include variants), but in the end, there were only about 10 characters seeing play. Diversity was almost non-existent in spite of having thousands of cards in print. No one card broke the game, but the cumulative effects of card combinations made 95% of all cards unplayed.

M.E. is almost undoubtedly not there. But unless you keep our working definition in mind, the design team may not guard against that outcome. They'll be saying, "will it win in a turn and is there a defense against it." In my opinion, those questions are insufficient for the long term continued health of a customizable card game.

[Deleted]

Fair enough.

I don't design card games, don't plan to either. I'll leave that to you and Keith and such. I'm a player first and last, and became a judge cuz I thought I could help. I personally enjoy staying down here making sense of it all for me and those around me. That being said, I don't know what is or should be judged broken or whatnot, and will just relegate to putting my two cents in when the subject comes up.

The game is really fun, and I find myself playing it over an M:tg game that has treated me pretty well over the years.

Does ME have diversity? Who knows...I think it's doing ok. It's 2 sets in, 300 cards. Let me give you some numbers from when I served as head judge this past Sat. for a competitive Regional tournament i.e a good source in my opinion...(I still have the decklists here and counted real quick)

The top 8 decks used a total of about 101 different cards, of 21 players.

Of those top 8 decks, there were 5 different Characters. The 2 other copies of a Character were Lady Phe'Ronde, with more than about a 50% decklist difference between each other. There was also one other repeat in Zycon, who sported a 60-70% similarity to the first.

The top 4 were 4 different Characters, Lady P, Thandore, Zycon, Sutraps.

Now...to each his own. That was our Regional.

The West qualifier had 2 Zycon and 1 Lady P as top 3.
The Midwest qualifier had Zycon, Glye, and Belphegor
The NE had 3 Lady P.

That's pretty close to what I would say are competitive playable characters in the game right now, which are, in no particular order: Sutraps, Lady Phe'Ronde, Zycon, Thandore, Belphegor. That's a realistic 5 of 13 available charachers, with maybe 2 more if we're pushing it. That's 5 Characters, and some of them have more than one playable deck type, so I would say 8 different decks, very playable and solid in current megagaming. I'm used to less than that in Type II Mtg, so I would say that's not too bad.

Again, I say all this completely neutral, just as a player, but thought I would provide some insight because you seem like the type of person that eats this stuff up. But I am still very intrigued by your comments and feel that there is a lot you could teach me, so I look forward to more of your wisdom.

[spiller]

Great info Q. What was the percentage on some of the key cards (Vorex, Purify, Slavedriver, Illusionist, etc)? I think we can all guess at the number one card, I am just curious at the percentage. In a perfect world I would like to see the percentages of the top 10 cards (not characters).

[tirus]

spiller said:

Great info Q. What was the percentage on some of the key cards (Vorex, Purify, Slavedriver, Illusionist, etc)? I think we can all guess at the number one card, I am just curious at the percentage. In a perfect world I would like to see the percentages of the top 10 cards (not characters).

I agree with spiller.

And I agree with Q. I like hearing from our friend darklord.

[Deleted]

I'll hit some numbers out later and put them up, cool?

[spiller]

While, to some degree, I agree with darklord I am not sure we should post that information in this thread. Posting it here may be looked at as a confirmation of brokeness. I just think it is useful information and MAY have some bearing on dealing with problem cards. I think similar data after the MEGA would be even more eye opening.

[spiller]

and thanks!

[tirus]

queue said:

I'll hit some numbers out later and put them up, cool?

Awsome. But maybe it should wait after mega. That would give a much bigger picture I think.

[darklord]

Q, thanks for the stats. Very interesting.

The real question is, how much diversity are there among the WINNERS of the regionals.

I mentioned Overpower. When I said that there were only 10 actively used characters out of 300, that was a bit of a misstatement. It's actually like there were only 10 different characters in the decks of people WINNING a regional event. You could bring anything you wanted to if you didn't mind losing.

I liked hearing about the diversity you saw. That's probably a good thing. The game has a relatively small card pool and limited diversity isn't always a sign of a "broken" card. It can be a sign of limited choices for a newly starting game.

A good thing to do -- see how many cards are in all or most of those WINNING decks from the regionals that are going on. You want to focus on cards that stick out. You know the card pool much better than me. If every last winner plays clerics or wizards or chickens, ask why. If every last winner has a trade agreement or a Vorex, ask why.

I bet, having seen just a couple of advanced play decks so far, that there are a handful of characters or items that are in most of the good decks, but that otherwise there's a lot of diversity.

Why are people playing the same cards? Now, if the answer is, "well, Lee, they are good cards and I'll stop playing them next set when I get a few more toys to play with and get bored of these", then you are probably OK. If the answer is, "well, Lee, the cards are so good that I won't stop playing them ever until something substantially more game breaking kicks it out of my deck", then you have happened upon a broken card. At least by my definition.

I can tell you from experience, that game designers hate hearing about broken cards. When one appears, you blew it during playtest. And guess what? In a customizable card game, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Just too much to playtest for most smaller companies.

Your job as players is to report things that are making the game stagnant in any appreciable way. It's the job of the designer to listen and decide if you are right.

As a designer, I hate being wrong. It's not because I enjoy being right. Well, that's part of it. (grin) It's that it means I let something less than perfect out on the market. And that's a disappointment. As a designer you like what you design to be fun for everyone, and you want your game to survive.

As a designer, you have to make the cards varied and powerful enough that people want to collect them (so you can pay your bills), but not so powerful that breaks your game or causes your environment to stagnate ('cause people will stop playing your game).

[Deleted]

Again...all good points. And like I said, I will provide numbers either privatized or after and of GenCon.

But as for these numbers, I'm sorry if I miscommunicated, but those 101 dif cards are from Top 8. Top 4 had 4 different Characters and so on...I just didn't get more specific cuz it'll take a little more, but I could tell you right now you have a point right there in Vorex...he's almost everywhere.

[darklord]

spiller said:

Posting it here may be looked at as a confirmation of brokeness.

So?! If it is, you identify the cards and ban them or reprint them with new versions. It's not the end of the world. Every broken card you find will rattle the designer. Guaranteed. Bugs the heck out of me when my design team finds errors.

I actually had a reverse of this bug. I left a symbol off a card I just printed and the card is still playable and legal, but about half as good as if I'd put the symbol on. I was VERY annoyed, but I spotted it, and plan on fixing it with a new version later this year.

If anything, M.E. is a small but growing game. You guys as players should watch it like a hawk. You want a game that's balanced and fun to play. That's how you'll keep growing the fan base.

Don't bug the designer and call everything broken. I've known some players to call about everything broken. That's just like crying wolf. Do it too often and you'll go unheard when it counts.

But if Q has got data proving that certain cards are consistently appearing in every winning deck, then that's data that the lead designer should have. Whether he agrees that a fix is in order will depend on his plans for future releases.

Have fun guys.

[synergy]

back to broken cards. as of now i dont see any and i dont see a problem any time soon. i do see a problem wiht grimus some time though. oh and one thing is guardian angle is brokenly good (the abandon part). NO ABANDON DAMAGE?!!?!! i would like it to do damgee to the guy

[jabotts]

This Post is BROKEN :-)

[kevmo]

Darklord your comments are most appreciated but please remember that this is a different game than the one you have created and most CCG's out there. In the realm of daring to be different there will be some problems with a filtering of a small amount of great cards being widely used in many winning decks. Especially in a new game. Most of the "problems" you see with this game have been noted and are currently being worked on. New sets will fix the problems of characters not being tournament worthy. And eventually there will be a consistent, precise and tournament friendly set of comprehensive rules that control the game in a manner that questions will be answered on the spot. As far as the definition of broken. As a designer of a game you should know as well as anybody you have the right to define broken as whatever your heart desires. As do the creators of this game. I think the bulk of your confusion with ME has to do with your comparison to other games. Which this game is far from similar to other games, which is one of the best qualities. Yes there are bugs but what new business, game, product, etc. .... doesnt? Will this game end up with similar rules to magic and the game you have created, most likely not for it is not the same game. Will they be definitive? yes Will the card pool even out in tournament usage? Most definitely, in time mind you. Things cannot be undone that have already been produced so they must be fixed in future cards and sets. which takes time. You cant make an entire set that relates to all of the previous cards that is just stagnant. Again your wisdom is appreciated as a game developer. Just remember to keep it positive so as not to negate the growth of the game. Thank you for being a member of our forums here and I wish your game good luck.