Could you all look into an alternative playback package? Soundcloud doesn’t seem to work properly on Android Phone Browser (I had to use Puffin and am still having several “cannot play this track” errors.)
Gold pooling made it mechanically easier to model in simulations (which I’ve done a bunch throughout the arc.) The problem I see is that they never flushed out the concept from a design perspective as you mentioned. You have cards that produce unmarked gold, produce marked gold, and reduce the gold cost of the thing you are trying to purchase. I personally prefer the latter because I think tracting all the marked gold overcomplicates the game. I also wanted to add that I think one of the biggest changes to Ivory is the resolution of the action. Before we had announce action, choose targets, pay costs, etc. Now we have announce action, pay costs, interrupts, resolve effects. The Interrupt concept I also think design kind of half-assed.
I would also like to petition to move the rules from a less generic to more card specific. Personally I would prefer a C.R. where you can look up a card and see all the rulings / errata / decisions associated with it. I miss back in the days when Zen would pretty much tell you this is how the card is suppose to work and rule it as such.
That seems like a good answer to Paul’s question of whether we’re the chill “read the cards pass the bong” game or a hardcore Magic style CR style game.
Well over 90% of cards clearly work and have no problems. For the small minority of cards that need lots of clarification, we’re seeing insane rulings to get them to work, which in turn have far-reaching consequences.
Invest is a great example. We had to completely change how it worked to allow it to interact with Colonial Dojo. Then we changed it again to prevent butt hurt when you get blown out by 0g Unsettling Gathering on your 10g Guidance in War. That changed how it interacts with recruiting dead personalities via 20 Festivals Phoenix box. Etc, etc etc. Invest is a simple and very good mechanic that’s been at the heart of a ton of rules problems because the team couldn’t just say “this is how it’s supposed to work”. Forcing it into their half-baked framework was the real problem.
Everyone talks about the Design Team, but the Development Team is the real heart of a good CCG.
I try my best to keep up the day-to-day rulings and reversals on the rules forums, but it has reached a point where I simply refuse to play certain cards because I have no clue how them cards work (Lover Letter and Discard, anyone?) There are over 30 unanswered mechanics rules on these cards from the last set alone and several post commenting on how backlogged the forum has become. And I want to be clear, I do NOT blame the rules team for this mess. I have worked with the Design Team before and in my experiences I have learned 2 lessons: 1. They don’t know the rules for the game they designed (see Abbot, Love Letter Sensei, etc.); 2. They leave it to unpaid rules team to fix the problems they create.
A funny note here, during the Ivory Design process one of the rules changes we worried about was the change to how Cavalry works. We were told several times by no small amount of people that this would lead to a mass exodus from the Unicorn Clan (we were told similar things with regards to the changes to dishonor and the Scorpion Clan, incidentally). It was a necessary change, but we went into public release sort of girded against a belief that there would be riots on the Unicorn forum over this.
That the changes to cavalry aren’t even really mentioned in this discussion I guess goes to illustrate just how things play out differently once they go into the public.
Yeah, we’re going to do a part 2 to this podcast. We missed the cav change, the engage step, reaction changes, and changes to events. We had already talked for over an hour, and it was really late for me.
I will say that I think the cav change was ultimately a buff to cav. Unicorn isn’t rioting because they’re on top of the heap.
Could you all look into an alternative playback package? Soundcloud doesn’t seem to work properly on Android Phone Browser (I had to use Puffin and am still having several “cannot play this track” errors.)
Sure. Starting with the next one i’ll switch platforms. Soundcloud doesn’t have good rss support for podcasters anyway.
Gold pooling made it mechanically easier to model in simulations (which I’ve done a bunch throughout the arc.) The problem I see is that they never flushed out the concept from a design perspective as you mentioned. You have cards that produce unmarked gold, produce marked gold, and reduce the gold cost of the thing you are trying to purchase. I personally prefer the latter because I think tracting all the marked gold overcomplicates the game. I also wanted to add that I think one of the biggest changes to Ivory is the resolution of the action. Before we had announce action, choose targets, pay costs, etc. Now we have announce action, pay costs, interrupts, resolve effects. The Interrupt concept I also think design kind of half-assed.
I would also like to petition to move the rules from a less generic to more card specific. Personally I would prefer a C.R. where you can look up a card and see all the rulings / errata / decisions associated with it. I miss back in the days when Zen would pretty much tell you this is how the card is suppose to work and rule it as such.
That seems like a good answer to Paul’s question of whether we’re the chill “read the cards pass the bong” game or a hardcore Magic style CR style game.
Well over 90% of cards clearly work and have no problems. For the small minority of cards that need lots of clarification, we’re seeing insane rulings to get them to work, which in turn have far-reaching consequences.
Invest is a great example. We had to completely change how it worked to allow it to interact with Colonial Dojo. Then we changed it again to prevent butt hurt when you get blown out by 0g Unsettling Gathering on your 10g Guidance in War. That changed how it interacts with recruiting dead personalities via 20 Festivals Phoenix box. Etc, etc etc. Invest is a simple and very good mechanic that’s been at the heart of a ton of rules problems because the team couldn’t just say “this is how it’s supposed to work”. Forcing it into their half-baked framework was the real problem.
Everyone talks about the Design Team, but the Development Team is the real heart of a good CCG.
The biggest issue I have right now with L5R is those 10% problem cards and the disconnect between the
Design Team and Rules Team.
The Abbot is the most recent example of the disconnect is seen here
http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=110995
I try my best to keep up the day-to-day rulings and reversals on the rules forums, but it has reached a point where I simply refuse to play certain cards because I have no clue how them cards work (Lover Letter and Discard, anyone?) There are over 30 unanswered mechanics rules on these cards from the last set alone and several post commenting on how backlogged the forum has become. And I want to be clear, I do NOT blame the rules team for this mess. I have worked with the Design Team before and in my experiences I have learned 2 lessons: 1. They don’t know the rules for the game they designed (see Abbot, Love Letter Sensei, etc.); 2. They leave it to unpaid rules team to fix the problems they create.
A funny note here, during the Ivory Design process one of the rules changes we worried about was the change to how Cavalry works. We were told several times by no small amount of people that this would lead to a mass exodus from the Unicorn Clan (we were told similar things with regards to the changes to dishonor and the Scorpion Clan, incidentally). It was a necessary change, but we went into public release sort of girded against a belief that there would be riots on the Unicorn forum over this.
That the changes to cavalry aren’t even really mentioned in this discussion I guess goes to illustrate just how things play out differently once they go into the public.
Yeah, we’re going to do a part 2 to this podcast. We missed the cav change, the engage step, reaction changes, and changes to events. We had already talked for over an hour, and it was really late for me.
I will say that I think the cav change was ultimately a buff to cav. Unicorn isn’t rioting because they’re on top of the heap.