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[György Straub]

Hey there fellow TIGFolk,

I've recently realized that a few years on I have more of a foundation to create the Computer Collectible Card Game that I've been wanting to. I had the rules, the world, and some card designs (not graphics) down way back, but I had to learn to code. Of course all I've got so far is subject to change, but for now it'd be enough to start off from and build on.

There are gameplay- and non-gameplay-specific elements to the game that can be shaped (hell, everything): the amount of "buying" needed, the balance of power among cards, the value (rarity) of cards, etc.

So, before I'd plunge into it, I'd love to know how you see the genre.

What do you like about it, what do you loathe about it? What would make you consider playing a CCCG? How different should it be from existing stuff and in what ways (rules / gameplay? game world? features?)?

I'll try to think of more specific questions. Thanks for your input!

[Coz]

Well, most of my experience with the medium is with Magic: The Gathering, though I know a little about Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokèmon, and have seen a few amateur-made games online.

They game seems to have 3 winning requirements: luck, skill, and money.

Explaning luck is obvious, mostly it's about the card shuffling. This seems to be the 2nd more important factor to win.

Skill seems to be something that is easily adquirable by playing a bunch of matches, and after you got it you can't improve upon it. Instead, when skill was crucial in winning, is mostly because one of the players made a slight error that gave the opponent the victory.

Money is well... you need money to buy the cards. This seems to be the most important component, but without skill you can't take advantage of it. However since it's easy to adquire the required skill, it all boils down to who has 'the best deck' most of the time.

The money factor exists because Magic is a commercial game, but I would love to see a CCCG game where with enough skill, an expert player with the worst deck ever can beat a player with moderate skill with the best deck ever... for this, all cards would have to be equally good or bad, more or less. There can be 'rare' cards, but they shouldn't have obvious advantage over common cards. So, no cards that are obviously better or worse than the average.

The luck factor can stay. However, the more cards the deck has, the more important luck is; I liked 40 card decks in Magic, since you can expect that the card you want will get to your hands eventually, butyou don't know when while with 60 cards you often curse your luck for not picking up one of those 2 super cards you have in the deck to win the match.

[eclectocrat]

My experience in chronological order. Magic: The Gathering, Middle Earth: The Wizards, Steve Jackson's Illuminati: New World Order, and some dabbling in like 5 or 6 others (Star Wars, and X-Files come to mind, but I couldn't find anyone to play with) (Colon's a re a necessary part of CCG's )

I happen to disagree about luck in MTG, as my friends got heavily into tournament play, and at high levels, deck building is all about managing percentages. Yes you can get unlucky but the chances start to fade into insignificant when you've developed good deck building skills. I never got into it because of the stupid amount of money it took.

What I like about CCG's is the feeling of pulling off a good combo. You manage to marshal the right cards and plop them down in the right order and something magical happens. The combo is more than the sum of it's parts.

I could never get into CCCG's because they tried to emulate actual cards instead of using the computer to improve the interface. Cards are cards, they have a special feel that can't be translated to the screen. Then again, cards can't have animation on them or hyperlinks. I think that distilling the core CCG experience into a CCCG would require really cutting out a lot of the fat. I don't like virtual cards. That's just me.

BTW, when I played Illuminati, 4 of my friends and I ordered a full boxed set for each of us, so there was no collectible component. Everyone was on even footing and the more skillful deck design usually won (except when everyone teamed up on someone just to piss them off!). That game rocked.

[Kurai]

I could never get into CCCG's because they tried to emulate actual cards instead of using the computer to improve the interface. Cards are cards, they have a special feel that can't be translated to the screen. Then again, cards can't have animation on them or hyperlinks. I think that distilling the core CCG experience into a CCCG would require really cutting out a lot of the fat. I don't like virtual cards. That's just me.

It's maybe just you, but still I quote. Maybe it's just me

[bateleur]

I've spent a lot of time playing CCGs. The main problem that digital ones tend to have is that their balance is really bad because the people who make them aren't good at any existing CCGs, so they don't really understand how to test them.

If you're not a good player yourself (tournament standard in at least one CCG) then at least make sure you have a playtester who is. And when they tell you something is broken, FIX IT.

The key properties I would want to see in a digital CCG are:

1) No more than a small fraction (say 20%) of the cards in the entire game are "bad" in the sense that they should ideally be replaced in every deck they appear in. In particular, if you add a pay-for-stuff mechanism, make sure it doesn't work by obsoleting cards.

2) There must be scope for offbeat strategies to survive in the metagame. It's pretty much impossible to make good decks hard to find, but that's OK so long as players can do well with other builds as well by taking advantage of the element of surprise. If all your cards are too similar such that your metagame has only three decks in it, you've failed.

3) Have a matchmaking system that lets me play the game without having to play against people who've invested far more money in their decks. Sure, they've paid to win, but I'm not forced to play - I'll just go and play something else instead.

[nihilocrat]

This podcast is a pretty good discussion on CCCGs: http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2009/04/07/three-moves-ahead-episode-7-collectible-card-games/

[brog]

I could never get into CCCG's because they tried to emulate actual cards instead of using the computer to improve the interface. Cards are cards, they have a special feel that can't be translated to the screen. Then again, cards can't have animation on them or hyperlinks. I think that distilling the core CCG experience into a CCCG would require really cutting out a lot of the fat. I don't like virtual cards. That's just me.

Exactly!  Physical cards have a good feel to them and are very interactive; you can rearrange their order, group them any way you like, separate them out, pile them up, hide them behind each other, randomise them.. all of which can help to think about the cards in a tactile way.  This helps with thinking about your move during the game, and really really helps with organising your cards to build a deck.  A direct videogame implementation of cards will struggle to have these properties - dragging with a mouse is more work than moving cards by hand, and screen space is limited.  I'd recommend paying a lot of attention to UI feel and let that inform the game design, rather than expecting to be able to do the same types of things that physical card games do (which might mean not using 'cards' as such!).

In terms of design of the actual game, study Magic closely.  There are certain problems which arise when designing a CCG, and the solutions used in Magic are very good; you shouldn't use all the same solutions, but you should have good reasons for not using them (not just to be different).  Things like; why wouldn't everyone find the best deck and use it?, why wouldn't card X improve any deck?

[bateleur]

There are certain problems which arise when designing a CCG, and the solutions used in Magic are very good

I understand what you're saying here, but I think that for a modern CCG Magic has to be regarded as a failure. The way the mana system works places too much emphasis on the initial hand and the first few draws.

Things like; why wouldn't everyone find the best deck and use it?, why wouldn't card X improve any deck?

Again, Magic is actually quite bad for this. A modern Magic expansion contains several hundred cards of which typically only half a dozen or so will see tournament play.