Resource system for a Superhero CCG

[gwago]

I've had a CCG system based on superheroes kicking around the back of my head for a while now. It's actually based on a superhero RPG that I had an idea for, so it sort of follows that basic formula: You have a party of three heroes who will battle and level up to learn new ways to use their powers.

I don't have any specifics down yet, but one thing that's been sticking in my craw is the resource system, which I believe needs to be simplified. Here's what I've got:

There are two different types of resources: XP and Energy.

• XP is a threshold-based system, that would be raised in a manner similar to Magic's land drop per turn. Cards require you to have a certain amount of XP to play; once you've reached their XP level, you can play them at will.


• Energy is a usable resource. Each hero has his own maximum energy; most cards have an energy cost, and playing one depletes the appropriate hero of that much energy. The unique part here is the way it refills: during the refill phase, your heroes' remaining energy doubles.
  For example, say I have Cyclops out with a full 6 energy, and I have him attack with Optic Blast. Not too trying an attack, it costs 3 energy, leaving him with 3. That number will double during the refill phase, and he'll be back at 6. Now say I have him attack with an Optic Nova, which costs 5. This will leave him at 1 energy and set him back quite a bit; next turn he'll be at 2, then the turn after that he'll be at 4, and finally able to use the weaker Optic Blast again (but at great cost; he'll be back at 1).

I'm very satisfied with the energy system, but the problem is this leaves a lot of bookkeeping for the player. With three heroes, individual energy totals can be tracked with counters, and the XP can be tracked with a D10, but this makes for a very cluttered board. Throw in the fact that I want to have a rotating damage system, where every hero rotates 90 degrees when injured (going an entire 360 means death), and this gets complicated fast.

I'm very happy with this system, but it doesn't seem very practical. Anyone have any ideas? Can I keep it as-is? Keep in mind that I don't really mind the rest of the game involving little-to-no permanents, so as muddled as the field is with this system it won't get any worse.

Thanks for the feedback!

[yudencow]

From your words I sense you know you went to far with this. My suggestion is going with either xp or energy. If i had to pick, I'll go with energy. Mkae everything available on the get go, and the player can allocate energy between hero abilities and purchases using a token pool.

What cards will be in the deck, abilities?, weapons?, lackeys?, events?. if you know how the deck will look like, the resource system will be much easier to construct.

[Typherion]

I'm designing a similar kind of game using energy as a resource but with fantasy heroes (called Chosen if you are interested). I think XP and energy could work well together.

XP would work as a pacing mechanism to restrict how early you could play higher level cards. This way, higher level cards can be made more powerful but still have the same energy cost as lower level cards.

I'm imagining something like this for example: 
Lvl 1 Laser Beam: costs 3 energy and deals 6 damage (can be played from turn 1)
Lvl 3 Laser Disco: costs 3 energy and deals 9 damage (can be played from turn 3)
Lvl 7 Laser Cannon: still costs 3 energy but deals 20 damage (can be played from turn 7)

You could even put all of these effects onto one super flexible card that scales up in power as your hero levels up.

This XP system would reward players for good deckbuilding because players who can curve out perfectly as they level up will be getting more for their energy. I really like this idea.

The only problem I can see is where you plan to draw the line for maximum XP. It might be really annoying if you had 10 different levels of cards and you got a bad hand and had to wait 5+ turns before you could even use any of your cards. But this problem could be mitigated by having cards that scale with the hero's level as I suggested above.

I'm not sure about your idea for energy regeneration. It seems to really punish using more than half your total energy. Cheap cards might end up way more effective than expensive ones. But I'm sure you will be able to make it work.

[gwago]

From your words I sense you know you went to far with this. My suggestion is going with either xp or energy. If i had to pick, I'll go with energy. Mkae everything available on the get go, and the player can allocate energy between hero abilities and purchases using a token pool.

What cards will be in the deck, abilities?, weapons?, lackeys?, events?. if you know how the deck will look like, the resource system will be much easier to construct.

It would definitely simplify things, but having absolutely no curve is a bit dangerous... the rest of the deck will probably mostly be Tactics (attacks and defensive moves). Weapons and Minions can be reflected through these cards as well. I'm still on the fence on whether to make powers stick around (as in, attached to a character) or just be one-shot attacks.

At this point I'm honestly thinking of keeping both, but simplifying the XP resource in a way that would allow players to keep track of it in a natural way (like with hand size, say, or number of cards in a discard pile) to diminish the amount of clutter.

[gwago]

I'm designing a similar kind of game using energy as a resource but with fantasy heroes (called Chosen if you are interested). I think XP and energy could work well together.

XP would work as a pacing mechanism to restrict how early you could play higher level cards. This way, higher level cards can be made more powerful but still have the same energy cost as lower level cards.

I'm imagining something like this for example: 
Lvl 1 Laser Beam: costs 3 energy and deals 6 damage (can be played from turn 1)
Lvl 3 Laser Disco: costs 3 energy and deals 9 damage (can be played from turn 3)
Lvl 7 Laser Cannon: still costs 3 energy but deals 20 damage (can be played from turn 7)

You could even put all of these effects onto one super flexible card that scales up in power as your hero levels up.

This XP system would reward players for good deckbuilding because players who can curve out perfectly as they level up will be getting more for their energy. I really like this idea.

The only problem I can see is where you plan to draw the line for maximum XP. It might be really annoying if you had 10 different levels of cards and you got a bad hand and had to wait 5+ turns before you could even use any of your cards. But this problem could be mitigated by having cards that scale with the hero's level as I suggested above.

I'm not sure about your idea for energy regeneration. It seems to really punish using more than half your total energy. Cheap cards might end up way more effective than expensive ones. But I'm sure you will be able to make it work.

Oof! Scalable cards are dangerous, and might be a bit overcomplicated. I've toyed with the idea a bit already, and what I'll probably end up doing is having scalable abilities on the heroes themselves (a few attacks they can use over and over again, but need certain XP levels to be played) and have different powers on different cards. Of course, the odd X Fireball power wouldn't hurt either.

You're right about the cheap cards being more effective, but hopefully that can be curved. I'm thinking a max energy "standard" will have to be adhered to (guys with Fire powers always have 5 max energy, say, and printing one with 6 max energy would break already existing Fire powers). Also in this scenario, Fire powers of cost 1 or 2 would have to be excessively weak to make the >2 cost powers work.

Thanks for the feedback, I've read over your Chosen CCG and will leave you some feedback of my own shortly.

[yudencow]

You can make your team scale simply by having a resource row you discard cards to. Like in VS System.

What I did in my game they start with 5 mana, and gain 2 every turn. There are ways to get more, but this not scales, but let players to set thier pace.

[Typherion]

Something I didn't appreciate fully appreciate before was the fact that you can use multiple actions per turn because you have 3 heroes.

I think this makes using high energy cost cards less punishing because even if one guy is recovering energy for 2 turns, you can still act through your other two guys. This makes me think that cards will actually be more valuable as a resource depending on how many you can draw each turn. A single draw of 1 card each turn probably won't be enough to keep the action flowing.

Throw in the fact that I want to have a rotating damage system, where every hero rotates 90 degrees when injured (going an entire 360 means death), and this gets complicated fast.

I guess you've thought about a more simple damage system of just turning the hero sideways when they get injured? Is there a reason you prefer 360 degree rotation?

I'm guessing that the usual tactic in a 3v3 battle will be to burn down one guy as fast as possible. So I suppose you will want to make defensive powers that your heroes can use to protect each other. Then the enemy guys might have to split some effort to lockdown some of your guys so they can't protect each other etc, etc. The possibilites are endless.

[gwago]

You can make your team scale simply by having a resource row you discard cards to. Like in VS System.

What I did in my game they start with 5 mana, and gain 2 every turn. There are ways to get more, but this not scales, but let players to set thier pace.

Yeah I'm gonna try to break from the standard formula and try to make it a lot simpler to gain mana, like maybe just spending an action every turn (that could be used for something else). I know the Magic formula is almost the gold standard but it's a bit inefficient forcing players to devote a third of their deck space to something they could get mana-screwed on anyway. The automatic gain every turn isn't a bad idea actually, since you can still ramp that up.

Something I didn't appreciate fully appreciate before was the fact that you can use multiple actions per turn because you have 3 heroes.

I think this makes using high energy cost cards less punishing because even if one guy is recovering energy for 2 turns, you can still act through your other two guys. This makes me think that cards will actually be more valuable as a resource depending on how many you can draw each turn. A single draw of 1 card each turn probably won't be enough to keep the action flowing.

Yeah that's definitely something I'm gonna have to keep an eye out for. You made me realize that I can probably afford to make powers cost 1 or 2 more considering its not such a big deal for heroes to be out of action for a turn or two. This also makes every move count a bit more...

I guess you've thought about a more simple damage system of just turning the hero sideways when they get injured? Is there a reason you prefer 360 degree rotation?

I'm guessing that the usual tactic in a 3v3 battle will be to burn down one guy as fast as possible. So I suppose you will want to make defensive powers that your heroes can use to protect each other. Then the enemy guys might have to split some effort to lockdown some of your guys so they can't protect each other etc, etc. The possibilites are endless.

Haha no, a system where you only rotate 360 would be useless as they'd just return to being right side up... I meant that every time a hero is damaged, it rotates 90 degrees, and when it reaches a full 360 degrees (4 times damaged) it's out of commission. This means you need to damage an opponent's heroes 12 times to win.

Healing would become a big game factor; like I mentioned above, I'm heavily leaning toward using an action system where you get an action (or two?) per turn, which you could use to either gain mana, heal a hero, or draw a card. If a proper turn consists of each hero getting a chance to swing, this might make for some tense games. I was originally going to have players discard a version of a hero to heal him or gain XP, but I'm not a big fan of forcing players to devote a big chunk of their deck space to structure.

[DNGR]

what about a fame/infamy system, which is on a scale from -9 to +9
where certain cards can be applied based on it.

it goes up and down with every decision your heroes make. based on how chivalrous the particular actions are.

[3XXXDDD]

Just reading through, is it really necessary to have more than one hero? Counting energy for one hero will be quite handier than three.

[gwago]

Just reading through, is it really necessary to have more than one hero? Counting energy for one hero will be quite handier than three.

True, but I really think it would make the game a lot more dull. A major part of the gameplay involves having characters that work well together like an RPG party, like a healer that's not too spectacular in combat backing up a tank. I want to be able to keep the RPG feel as much as possible.

I do, however, intend to have an expansion introduce characters that are much more powerful but playable on their own (the Thanoses and Galactuses of this world), but that's doesn't really pertain here.

what about a fame/infamy system, which is on a scale from -9 to +9
where certain cards can be applied based on it.

it goes up and down with every decision your heroes make. based on how chivalrous the particular actions are.

That's a great idea, but I don't know if it fits too well with what I've got for the game so far. You should really consider applying this to a game though, I really like the idea!