Tag: ccgs

Revisiting Collectible Card Game RPGs

I remember playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game for Gameboy Color as a child. It is a game where you walk around to different gyms and battle trainers and gym leaders using pokemon trading cards. Opponents give you booster packs when you defeat them, and you use the new cards from those packs to build and improve your decks. There is a storyline, but it is very thin; the game is mostly focused on battles.

These days, there are plenty of digital Collectible Card Games (CCGs) out there. CCGs are not the same as the deckbuilding games that are popular nowadays; in a CCG, you can freely assemble and modify any number of custom decks from your ever-growing collection, whereas deckbuilders incorporate deckbuilding into the game and greatly restrict your ability to modify your deck.

Most digital CCGs are built around an online PvP structure, supplemented by a limited challenge mode where you compete against an AI. Microtransactions to buy new cards or booster packs are also common. Presumably the thought is that players will compete against their friends and be driven to improve their decks, occasionally shelling out some money for better cards.

This is a terrible idea.

CCGs that rely on PvP inherently suffer from the problem of network effects, the same as any other multiplayer game. If many people play the game then the game is fun. If few people play the game, then it isn’t fun, even if the basic mechanics are sound. Having a thriving PvP scene is a nice bonus, but it absolutely cannot carry the game.

Why don’t we see more digital CCGs like the old Pokemon game? Because of the (weak) RPG structure, it was a lot of fun even if you didn’t play against other human players (though that was also supported using a gameboy link cable). CCGs actually form a very strong basis for an RPG. Both opponents are playing with the same ruleset, so it is easy to understand what your opponent might do. Booster packs work as natural loot for winning a battle, and it is easy to draw a connection between the opponent and the loot; just brand the booster pack accordingly. The player can also expect to find some of the cards that the opponent used against them in the booster pack, which is a very effective incentive to challenge the same foe again and again.

RPG combat, at least from traditional JRPGs can also often feel repetitive and stale, with the player just finding the optimal attack and hammering it. Even looking at the pokemon games, I find that the RPG combat is much less interesting than the CCG combat – there are so many moves like leer and growl that there is no point in using because the more powerful moves will take out the opponent instantly. Whereas the card game is structured so that almost every move is useful in some instances, often because the player lacks the energy for the move they really want to use.

I think CCG RPGs have a lot of unexplored potential. The CCG elements fix the problem of stale combat and progression mechanics, and the RPG elements ensure that you don’t need a vibrant online player base to enjoy the game. I’m definitely considering trying my hand at one at some point.

Granularity and Combat Mechanics in Tactical CCGs

I have never played Hearthstone, but I have played some of the games it inspired. Back when its servers were still active, I remember enjoying Duelyst a lot, in particular. Duelyst was an online CCG where players drew creatures, items, and spells and played them to a grid. Essentially, Hearthstone but with spatial positioning. While I don’t often care much about graphics, I found its pixel art style one of its most compelling features.

Recently, partially out of nostalgia for Duelyst, I tried out a similar game called Cards and Castles 2. I stopped playing after only a few minutes because I found the granularity of the combat mechanics to be unbearably high. Just as with Duelyst, each creature has an attack number and a health number. Attacking lowers your target’s health number and also prompts them to counterattack. However, the range of numbers used commonly goes into the forties and fifties. Worse, to see the current attack and health, you have to mouse over a unit, making it very difficult to understand each creature on the board at a glance.

Funnily enough, Battle for Wesnoth has similar combat mechanics and granularity, but I don’t mind it in that game. I think this is due to expectations. Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game often played against the computer, so you expect to consider each move carefully. Cards and Castles 2 presents as a CCG suitable for quick matches against other people, so the amount of processing required to understand each unit is more noticeable. Duelyst, by contrast, keeps most numbers under ten and displays them clearly beneath the creatures.

The moral of the story is that large numbers make it harder for players to grasp the game state because they make the arithmetic harder and less automatic. Another related issue with Cards and Castles 2 is that the abilities of the cards use percentages; “this unit gets 20% damage resistance” or “this unit takes 70% less damage when attacked from the front.” A percent value works for probabilities but serves as a barrier to understanding when it requires actual multiplication. The only percentages that most players can multiply without effort are 50%, multiples of 100%, and (to a lesser degree) 10%. Abilities phrased in terms of small integers are a lot easier to grasp.

In contrast to board game design, I think it is tempting when making computer games to assume that complex calculations carry no cost because the computer is performing them. But this isn’t entirely true – even though the computer can crunch the numbers, the player may still want to understand what they mean.

After my disappointment with Cards and Castles 2, I still felt nostalgic for Duelyst, so I tried another similar game; Stormbound. I was pleasantly surprised. The game takes place on a four-by-five grid where the objective is to damage your opponent by marching a certain number of units to their side of the board. Unlike other tactical CCGs, it is an auto-battler – you cannot issue commands to your pieces once placed; they move forward by themselves every turn.

Another unusual feature of Stormbound is the deck size – 12 cards. Most CCGs have decks of 30-45 cards, but Stormbound instead recycles cards so that you have no discard pile. You can have exactly one copy of each card in your deck and see all of them several times each game. Lucid works the same way, so I am well acquainted with its advantages. Among other things, this makes constructing a deck much less daunting since you only have twelve choices to make and don’t have to worry about how many copies of each card to include.

The most novel feature of Stormbound for me was the stats of its armies. Instead of the typical Attack/Health, each card has Strength/Movement. The first number is how many units you gain when playing the card; the second is their number of immediate moves.

When two opposing armies fight, they both lose an equal number of units such that only one remains. I have not seen combat mechanics of this mutually-destructive sort before; the closest thing I can think of is combat in Neptune’s Pride. My natural inclination before seeing Stormbound was that it wouldn’t work because it eliminates the possibility of one side gaining an advantage through combat – for each unit you destroy, you have to sacrifice one of your own, so what is the point?

I think I understand how Stormbound makes it work, however. Most units created are just a byproduct of effects that occur when you play cards. For example, playing a card might deal one damage to every unit in a line AND create a two-strength army at the origin of the line. Some units do have persistent special effects, but most do not. It doesn’t matter that your units mutually annihilate in combat because the game is all about where you play your cards.

The idea of having one number combine attack and health doesn’t seem quite so radical to me anymore. In Duelyst, combat hurts both parties as well; the only difference is that both might survive. It might be different in a multiplayer game where both suffer to the benefit of the other players; then again, this is already what happens with more than two players.

I don’t recommend Stormbound as a game. It allows players to level up their cards to make them stronger, which means that a player who has spent more money might have a better deck than a new player even with the same cards. But it has does have some unusual mechanics worth checking out that challenge the orthodoxy on digital CCGs.