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Hex MMOTCG Kickstarter by Cryptozoic Entertainment [Complete, ~$2.5 million funded]
- Thread starter piratepwnsninja
- Start date
There are blue humans too Ill prob try a blue/white human
I might do blue/white as well. I don't really know what it offers yet. I'm a total Magic noob but I really like humans in that game for some reason.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
piratepwnsninja
Member
And all the Pro Player tier are gone!
AstroZombie
Banned
It actually gained momentum, today was by far the campaign's best day.
I think we are going to reach the final stretch goal way too early.
inanutshell
Member
Yeah. But with all the Pro Player tiers gone, I wonder how they'll keep the momentum. Maybe more Pro Player spots at 300?
AstroZombie
Banned
I think/hope they'll have enough time to come up with something good.
I think it'll go back to "just" 50k/day like it was doing before today.
piratepwnsninja
Member
If they stick with the pattern they have, we've already met the first of the current unannounced stretch goals.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I got 3 pro tiers as well, 2 for myself, 3rd for a mate but now he is not sure about >_< Oh well, I'm sure if he doesn't want some GAFer will
Yeah I'll gladly take it later :lol *in dual payments*
questionmark
Member
They should consider adding more pro player tiers. Has there ever been a more popular limited tier in the history of kickstarter?
Pro accounts for 1/3rd of their doantions, still gettin plenty. Reason pro is so popular is because its a bad deal for them in the long run. They arent apt to repeat it at same price
awesome thank you for pointing that out.
Motte in Paris
Member
Remember this is still the Alpha client, i'm sure they will come up with something better UI wise, like letting the player chose between "pass priority for now" and "pass until end of turn" (not to mention hotkeys instead of having to click!). However, it's important to give the player the opportunity to do something - even if there is nothing he can do - otherwise the opposing player will know that he doesn't have any instants/quick actions in his hand to play.
piratepwnsninja
Member
Having that opportunity to do something as a response to your opponent is what adds a level of depth that won't exist in Hearthstone and doesn't exist in something like Shadow Era. Redesigning that aspect of the game isn't going to happen, because it's clear they want people to be able to have interrupts, etc.
Or it's clear that they just want a quick cash-in by cloning MtG with the minimum amount of effort to pretend it's different. It's not like these guys never designed a TCG of their own before. Also the argument that instant spells are impossible to implement without a strict priority system from a game designed around the analog world with only human players seems to be quite thin.
piratepwnsninja
Member
Then tell me, how would you do instants/interrupts without a priority system while not letting the game devolve into chaos?
Delusibeta
Banned
Or alternatively they could have not had the "player has possible moves" detection in yet, since it's an alpha.
How about every spell has a time window to react instead of asking the other guy "do you want to do anything?" every time? How about not having instant spells resolve immediately and not have those that are purely reactionary spells like counterspells? Plus they are the game designers, not me, and certainly having a smooth gameplay experience is worth rethinking the mechanics they're aping from a bit? Unless they come out and say that their plan was to provide an experience as similar to MTG as possible, surely there's plenty more ways to design a mechanic rather to have instants work exactly the same way.
Sure, you can say it's Alpha, but I'll be skeptical on that improving much.
One example of this for me is the annoying use of instants on your opponent's end step. You don't need that. If instants were primarily combat pumps, then the end step could just be focused on resolving any continuous effects before moving onto the next turn, easy and quick.
Instead, it's now "lol, I was just bluffing a combat pump when I really was just going to cast this thing to let me draw a card." If you're going to bluff, then bluff. Otherwise that's an interaction step that isn't really needed and it's existence means that you should always do it since there isn't any downside.
It's especially annoying when combat has the defender's advantage anyway.
Edit: Basically, if instants were primarily combat pumps, or something designed to react to another spell (meaning the only time to start ask to pass priority is after a sorcery level spell starts a spell stack in the first place) you'd make the game much faster. Being able to cast a spell at the beginning of every. single. possible. step. available. just causes a lot more complexity than it creates depth.
piratepwnsninja
Member
And the mechanical difference between a time window and passing priority button is what, exactly? Both serve the exact same function of giving a player the opportunity to react, and one guarantees that the other player has committed to "I'll allow it" or "I'm going to do something about this." If they're going to want to have this game be legitimate with tournaments and such, having a "time window" would have a greater risk of leading to problems of "I tried to do this but the time window ran out." They'd have to make the window so large that they'd end up having a button to allow players to pass if they weren't doing anything, which is no better than what currently exists.
Criticizing without valid solution is just a sign you don't like it because it is copying from Magic, and it's fine that you don't like that they're copying from Magic. But let's not make up problems with the implementation of their design where there aren't any. Note that isn't to say there aren't problems with the design, but the priority passing isn't one of them.
This is valid if they don't have cards that are useful at the end step. There are plenty of instants that I waited to use in Magic at the end of an opponents turn because they were tapped out and had no response to me.
No, using a time window is a valid solution. It means it adds speed to a cerebral game. Just like Starcraft does. Just like speed chess does. It just means the game isn't only turn based, and the clock wouldn't just be there to prevent people from stalling for half a day.
piratepwnsninja
Member
If they want it to be legitimate, have tournaments, and take into consideration that not everyone operates a computer at the same speed, then no, it's not.
There are tournaments for twitch-based games, are there not? Not having a computer that can run at a decent enough speed is not basis enough. Or you can say it doesn't have to be basis enough.
How about having the gameplay continue for the active player even though the time window is triggered?
Look, I know you're just going to think of situations to disprove me that my solutions doesn't work and somehow these guys already thought through that, and that is exactly because for you, instants need to work exactly like MTG. I'm not going to spend more time thinking of solutions because that's not my job, to say it's impossible is laughable however considering they're making a brand new game.
Well if you like having confirmation prompts for everything you do in a game, maybe this is the perfect game for you. I surely can't argue with that.
piratepwnsninja
Member
But then they're designing a different game, and my argument is for the game they've seemingly designed, a time window is not a valid solution.
I'm not arguing that they aren't straight up stealing from Magic in a lot of ways, I'm just saying for what they're doing, priority passing is the best solution.
We're saying that it doesn't have to be exactly like Magic. Magic may be their base, but they don't have to steal all the same spells, all the same mechanics, all the same trigger problems that make priority passing an issue. They're adding things to make this go beyond Magic can do, but there's no reason they can't reinspect the design in all the ways Magic could do (but won't, because they already have their winning formula with huge amount of momentum).
One great example: The fact that they have the champion charge system. Every time you play a mana card, you get a charge counter. When you have enough, you can cash them in for an effect. I can tell you right now that I'm going to focus on champions who have a charge power that let them me put a creature on the field and at least block with it or trade off a creature from the board. Right there is a great solution to mana flood.
But what are they doing about mana screw? Right now, nothing, and that bothers me. That's the primary reason why I'm still in the Squire Tier and am not budging.
piratepwnsninja
Member
And saying it doesn't have to be exactly like Magic is fine. But the above argument was a poor one simply because it had trickle down consequences that would alter more than just that mechanic. My replies have been, the entire time, based on the design that they've shown. If we're going to redesign aspects of the game, it's worth thinking about and noting all the other things that would have to change just to accommodate said change. It's not as easy as saying a time window would work, because that affects more than just that.
Agreed on the mana screw...we actually have what we call the "doug rule" at work when playing Magic, which allows you to set aside a single land from your deck at the beginning of the game, and you have the option of drawing it instead of your draw on the draw phase. We don't always play with that rule, but if we're playing with Doug we generally do.
Take everything from the base mechanics, remove the stack, then redesign the game from there for a digital game. So there. It takes a lot of effort, but isn't that what creation is all about?
The even sadder thing is how do you go from a team of people who design new card games to "Hey, let's clone MtG, but with an online infrastructure and sell that!".
The even sadder thing is how do you go from a team of people who design new card games to "Hey, let's clone MtG, but with an online infrastructure and sell that!".
Minsc
Gold Member
Have you played SolForge? It's quite fun and pretty deep, and there's no mana/lands/resources to deal with, no pausing on your opponent's turns to maybe play spells, no dealing with 1,000 counters or armies of hundreds of creatures, and it plays very quickly. Feels much, much faster paced than MtG. Sounds like something you'd enjoy.
But removing the stack, and by extension the ability to respond to your opponent's actions, would make it not interesting to a lot of the people that are backing this game. One of the reasons I'm so excited about this is that they specifically aren't making a dumbed down for asynchronous play TCG.
It is kind of sad that they are cribbing from Magic so directly, but I can't really blame them for jumping into the giant hole of opportunity that Wizards has left open with their really poor MTGO implementation and pricing.
Heard of it, never tried it though, I'll take a look. Edit: Oh, it needs an iPad, explains why I never tried it then.
But I'm perfectly fine with MtG the way it is and it's by far my favorite TCG with the layered mechanics and rules. I just don't think it translates well to digital form as is. Rarely people in real life play with strict priority passing and if people did, it wouldn't have as much success as it has today.
I didn't just stop at that, I said then redesign the game from there. You could design another version of the stack that's less volatile and less active through all the phases. That's why it needs a fundamental reworking rather than just minor tweaks. With a digital game you could also implement tracking and other behavior that would be just impossible to implement in an analog card game.
Oh, I guess I could always look at the videos first. And hey, Brian Kibler is involved. He worked on the WoW TCG too as mentioned in the thread title. He was also one of my guildmates during the early days of WoW. Maybe I should ask him for a beta key...
I don't think there will be one till tuesday..
I just hope they actually make reward tiers between 660 and 780 instead of making it one hop...
^^ And the moment I posted that, they update:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../484413?ref=email&show_token=7faaae5889922365
new stretch goals/rewards;
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../484413?ref=email&show_token=7faaae5889922365
new stretch goals/rewards;
Delusibeta
Banned
This is getting slightly silly now. Day 10 and it currently is the 24th most funded Kickstarter in Games, and the 17th most funded video game.