New CCG Game, Project Hybrid

[adran]

Hi all. I'm not sure if there is a rule against this (if there is I'll edit my post immediately, so please mods, don't come crashing down on me pointlessly when simple kind words are more than enough), but I am going to be linking to another forum post on the MSE2 forums, as that has the full info on my game and apparently these forums don't support spoilers AND have a size limit. Please comment (either here or there, doesn't really matter) on the game and ways it might be improved. Please understand its VERY new (we thought it up just this last weekend), and is far from a finished product. Any ways to improve it will be greatly appreciated.

http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/node/3532

[Dragoon]

Please post a summary & pics here.. As I don't have anything against linked, but there isn't just unough info here.

[adran]

The game can't really be summed up very well in a summary, and we have no pics. Its simpler to just follow the link to the post with all the info if you're curious, both on you and me. The game just plays so differently from anything else I know that I can't think of many ways to summarize it without leaving out something important. It wouldn't be much of a summary if it was 3 pages long.

[xchokeholdx]

I skimmed over the rules a bit.

my first thoughts: way too complicated and way to many rules and card types.

Gameplay is not streamlined, and tapped cards on a very big grid very quickly creates a messy overview.

Card costs are way to complicated:

""Cost: 4 Metal, 2 Gears, 1 Energy + 1 Stamina from 2 Summons within 1 Step.""

Cards should only have one or two keywords, especcially in a starting set:

""Name: Saber Fencer
Summon - Human - Fencer
Cost: 2 Metal - 5 Training
Attack: 3
Guard: 2
Health: 2
Stamina: 4
Edge Guard, Battle Ready, Feint, Parry 2""

Trim down the keywords to just one or two per set.: This is not what a player is looking for in a game:

Strafe: Cards with Strafe can move side-to-side, but at the cost of 2 Stamina like moving backwards.
Edge Guard: Cards with Edge Guard do not get -1 when being attacked from the side, and opponents cards do not get +1 when flanking. Cards with Edge Guard can attack cards to the Left or Right without turning or moving.
Barrier X: When a card with Barrier takes damage, that damage is negated. When a card has negated a total of X damage with Barrier, it loses Barrier. Multiple instances of Barrier Stack, so if a card has Barrier 2 and gains Barrier 1 it then has Barrier 3.
Spin: A Spin Effect Triggers when a card is rotated 360 Degrees in 1 turn.
Dizzy: After a card with Dizzy takes an action and at the start of each of your turns, toss a coin, on heads it is rotated 90 degrees to your right, on tails is is rotated 90 degrees to your left.
Battle Ready: When this card is attacked, if it survives, the attack, it attacks its Attacker
Feint: If this is counter attacked, you can end the battle.
Parry X: When this card is attacked you can pay X Stamina to move this card to the left or right.
Overkill: An Overkill effect triggers when the card Overkills an Opponent's Summon.
Viral: A card with Viral loses 1 Health at the start of each of your turns. When a card with Viral is destroyed, the space it is on and all spaces around it become Infected for 3 rounds. A card is on an Infected Space gains Viral. Viral does not stack.
Tactical Guard: When this card is attacked, you can switch the attack to a Summon you control to the left or right of the attacker.
Dimension Shift X: Flip this card face down. If this card is face-down by the effect of Dimension Shift, pay X to flip it face-up.
Sealbound X: When a card with Sealbound has its Health reduced to 0 or lower, restore this cards Health and move it to an X Seal card you control.
Stockpile: During Restructuring play this card from your hand in your Stockpile. You can only use Stockpile once per turn.
X Breaker Y: Pay X to destroy target step within Y spaces of this card.
Endurance: During Rest, if this cards Health is 0 or less, Recover all of this cards health.
Survivor: If this card would be destroyed by a card effect, its Health becomes 1 instead.
Sin: Sin is a Keyword Ability exclusive to Sin Monsters. All Sin Summons have Sin. Cards with Sin have Endurance, Survivor, and "If "Sin" is your Tactician or you control 'Sin' you can play this card pay reducing "Sin's" Health by half this cards Resource Cost." A card with Sin comes into play with 3 Sin Counters, when this card uses Endurance or Survivor, reduce this cards Sin Counters by 1. If this card has 0 Sin Counters, it is put into the Graveyard.
Shaver: When a card with Shaver inflicts damage to a summon, reduce that summons Defense by the damage.
Reaver: When this card attacks, ignore all Non-Tactical Damage Reducing abilities.
Vorpal: When this attacking card reduces the HP of the opposing card to 0, send that card to the Graveyard.
Agile: This card can move diagonally. This card move in any direction adjacent to it as if it were facing that direction. This card does not take a penalty when being attacked from the side or behind.
Shockwave X: When a card with Shockwave inflicts damage through battle, inflict X damage to all cards within 1 step of the opposing monster except this card.
Automated: Control of Automated Cards cannot Switch.
Networked: Card must be within 3 Steps of a Network-Type card or your Tactician or it Powers Down.
Powered Down: The Attack, Guard, and Stamina of a powered down card is 0. A powered down card looses all of its effects except for the one that powered it down.
Full Armor: A card with Full Armor does not take a Penalty when Attacked from Behind or the Sides.
Spectral: Card treats all tiles as normal tiles and is unaffected by panel cards. Cards with Spectral can move through other Summons (But you cannot end your turn with a Spectral Card Sharing a tile with another card).
Reanimation: When a card with Necromancy kills a Summon by battle, the killed Summon is not sent to the Graveyard during Rest and its health does not recover. You gain control of the killed monster.
Defile: When a card with Defile kills a Summon by battle, send the killed monster to the Graveyard and put a Defiler Summon into play from your hand with a Resource Cost that is equal to or less than the killed Summon an the Tile the killed Summon was on (Your attacking card does not move onto the killed Summons Tile).
Death X: Death abilities trigger when the card is killed beacuse of X (if X is not specifyed, it triggers on any death)
Synergy X: A card has its Synergy effect as long as a card with type or sub-type X is within 3 Steps of it. If X is in quotation marks ("X") then X refers to the name of a card.
Point Guard X: In exchange for moving during that turn, a gains X Guard until next Redeploy.
Graceful Return: When a Fencer Kills an opponents Summon by battle, return this card to your hand. You can only use 1 Graceful Return effect per turn.
Dodge Roll X: Pay all of this cards Stamina. Move it to any empty space within X Tiles of it.
Side Step (Uncommon): Card can move Left or Right without Turning.

-Tactical Keywords-

Quick Command: If the Opponent's Tactician does not have Quick Command, you start the Engagement first.
Defender Ready: At the start of the game, play 1 Summon from your deck in the centre of your Blockers Zone, it cannot be moved for the duration of the Engagement.
Resource Command: You can place 1 card in your Resource Deck on top of your Resource Deck at the start of the Engagement.

Simplicity FIRST
Complexity LATER

I would trim down the resources a lot, to just 3 or 4 basic ones (you can always add more later on)
Trim down the grid, it is way to big.
It seems like you are trying to mix a miniature game with a board and card game. sorry, but that idea will just not work. Miniature gamers HATE to move cards around. Card players hate to have to play on a grid.

maybe you should take a look at Anachronism, and see the simplicity of that game. try to trim your game down to that size.

[adran]

The keywords there are FAR from what are in the first set. That's a plan for keywords we expect will be used in the first several sets. We need them to be keywords, or some of the cards wont be able to fit everything properly. And of course the rules aren't streamlined, we haven't even done the first test-play yet. These are FAR from the final rules of the game. Also, there are no "tapped" cards, as cards don't tap in this game, merely rotate. We already have several plans on how to handle this in games. The card types are quite necessary for what we have planned. Overall, I'm fairly certain Magic has more than our game does. And our rules are overall no more complex than Magic or most other card games. I'm fairly confident the gameplay won't seem so complex once we can finally go through and write the rules in their more streamlined version once we decide what to add or remove. You won't really get this particular game without reading the rules we have up in more detail than just a skim. That's because we haven't streamlined it though. Once its streamlined, it should make for a much easier read.

[xchokeholdx]

Cool, that's nice to hear.

awaiting some streamlined rules then..

[malarious]

Lets see here,

keep in mind I did actually go through all the rules, and am aware some of the following comments may seem redundant but I felt were worth noting.

I like the Final Fantasy Tactics aspect of all this, but heres my information and suggestions for things like streamlining.

1)  Costs should have a sub generic.  For instance the resource could be called Tech, but then the logo shows what specific type (if symbol based game) otherwise something below the picture that says "Tech - Gear".  This will greatly improve the readability beyond what you have already put into it. But with resources playing randomly you can be mana screwed in a form, which causes heavy expectations of single typed decks.  Keep in mind the goal is to not have a "Gear" and "tech" resource as seperate cards but to try to keep them together.

2) Along with one, try to only use costs like "gear" versus "tech" for especially potent cards, which you may need to define.  This way there is less risk of being unavailable.  Mind you it is late so it is possible I forgot/missed if it said any subtype can count as generic. 

3) Your intro rules should show only what is in the initial set so it is less to take in and not so much to read you cannot see for awhile.

4) I dont mind using a grid for cards, in my opinion such games should be classified as TCCGs, or Tactical Customizable Card Games.  Most games of this nature use the word tactics to reflect using the grid.

5) The more options a card has the better, but the harder to balance, keep these in mind.

Thats all for now

[adran]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the cost, so I'm going to take this opportunity to clarify cost, and will probably eventually edit the other post to add this in.

During the Restructuring (Supply) step, you show a random card from your Resource Deck. A typical Resource Deck will probably be made up of cards that are also in the main deck (thus the reason for our unusual limit on the number of cards in a deck). Lets say you reveal this card:

Name: Metalworks
Structure - Factory
Cost: 4 Metal, 2 Gears, 1 Energy + 1 Stamina from 2 Summons within 1 Steps.
Health: 30
Once per turn you can pay 2 non-Metal Tech Resources to produce 5 Metal.

For the other things you mentioned: Variable is a generic cost, meaning you can use any type for it, but Variable does not add any type to the Resources if you use a card with Variable in your Resource Deck. The Intro Rules also are based on notes made by my partner. As such, they have things he was just making note of, along with some notes I added. When we've tested the game out, part of the streamlining will be removing excess keywords not used in the first set, along with other various things.

Well, the Resource Cost of that card is 4 Metal, 2 Gears, and 1 Energy. That amount of resources just got added to your total resources available, which means you can now play anything that costs 4 or less metal, 2 or less gears, and/or 1 energy. The majority of the cards in the first set so far use costs from 2 or more resources, especially Structures like this one. Just from having revealed that card, I can now play:

Name: Cyber Strike Tank
Summon - Tank - Cyber Tank
Cost: 1 Metal, 1 Energy
Attack: 3
Guard: 2
Health: 2
Stamina: 3
Full Armor, Automated, Networked.

And in the same turn, I can also then play:

Name: Network Node
Structure
Cost: 2 Metal
Health: 10
If this card is within 3 Tiles of a Network-Type Card, this card is treated as a Network-Type Card.

Due to the unique Resource system, getting "mana screwed" isn't going to happen often, as you can build your Resource Deck to give you a fairly high amount of resources per card. On top of that, since Resources don't go away, you can build up resources over time to play a larger card much earlier (with a bit of luck) than in a game like Magic, or to play a lot of little cards or for Resource costing effects.

[malarious]

The fact your resources stack should tell you just how complicated it will get if you have 5 resources plus stamina and such to track.

You truly have 16+ kinds of resources because of how its set up, when that shouldn't usually be needed I wouldn't think.

Just some quick notes will look over things after some sleep

[adran]

Its true the game has a lot of resources, but it is doubtful anyone should ever need to track more than 3. At most, I don't plan to allow the game to have anything have more than 5 resource types (not including variable), unless its VERY special circumstances. Currently, the game has nothing with more than 3 resource types, as that's the limit we have with LackeyCCG. Due to this, its doubtful we'll have more than that for ease of tracking in the program. If this were to be released IRL, it would probably be possible to get a starter package with everything you'd need to keep track of Resources, owners of cards, and other stuff.

[Sahaen]

Well its been a long day with 3 exams today so i didnt read through all the rules (sorry!) but it does sound rather complicated. I'll read it if I can. You might want to officially state that this is a "hardcore-strategy" game (which i presume it is) so more casual gamers wont lament the large rules-text.

[adran]

Alright, since my best attempts are all failing and I really want to get this working so (when its time) more than just me and my partner can play Project Hybrid, can anyone here tell me where I can upload files for an updatelist.txt file to use? So far nothing works. I don't know any websites that will host the file properly (the one website i know for file hosting that I trust changes the URL for the file every now and then, so I cant use it).