Why are cards rated by their "quality" by the game itself? Isn't it part of the discovery of the game that the player learns what is a good card and what isn't? Isn't what defines a "great" card and what defines an "average" card really subjective? When I first started playing Magic when I was in middle school, I just shuffled every card I owned in a giant deck. It didn't matter that Phantasmal Terrain was a terrible card that I really didn't need, or that by having hundreds of cards in my deck, I wasn't likely to draw my Shivan Dragon, because I was having fun. But as I played more, I started to realize that "Hey, some of these cards really aren't good. What if I took them out, then I'd draw my dragon more often". And that was just the start of a journey of learning to evaluate cards, and make decisions about which I should use and which I shouldn't, that I'm still on today (although admittedly I don't have time for M:tG much anymore). So why is the game trying to tell us that "Card A is great, and Card B is average"? Shouldn't we be the ones making these decisions? And isn't part of the fun discovering these answers for ourselves? And what happens if a card that BM have labeled Great turns out to be generally regarded by the community as a dud? Or a card labeled Average is actually a hidden gem that most players think should be standard in most decks? Will BM actually update the cards and change their ratings? And if not, what is the point of the quality ratings at all? And for that matter, isn't the "quality" of a card hugely dependent on the item it comes from? A "good" card on an item that doesn't cost me any talent points is actually better than a card slightly better from an item that does cost me talents. So where is the line being drawn? Who is deciding that All Out Attack is "great", but Altruisim is only "average"? **NOTE: I don't have beta access, so I accept that this may be more understandable once I get my hands on it**
It matters when building item suites - or the devs would have to have invisible power rankings for every card to keep track of creating balanced gear and monster decks. That's the simple answer but I bet there's more reasons. Also, as those cards are on items, you can't really pick ONE card - you have to pick the cards that go with them, making the card quality something that you'll look at for tradeoffs (bad cards or drawbacks) in item suites. All out Attack is gold due to it scaling in power with the attack played. Altruism is average, because it's a roll - and is static in terms of it's effect. Also, believe it's Dorian's department setting rarity/power on cards and he's rebalancing a lot - so I don't see why that wouldn't continue as the game goes live.
Invisible rankings for the devs would be fine. I don't understand why it has to be visually represented on the cards. Mark Rosewater talks about how they "point" cards in R&D for MtG, and they do internal testing, so obviously developers have to understand power levels. But they don't then put a visual distinguishment on the card so that players can tell what R&D believes the power level of that card is. So why does BM do it, that's the heart of my question. I also want to be clear that I am NOT saying they are "wrong", I'm just trying to understand why they are doing it. But using different criteria, I could arrive at different conclusions. Altruism is a better "build around me" card, and if you focus to abuse it, I think it's power level is higher than AoA. But again, arguing about why it's one versus the other isn't the point. The point is why does the game (the devs) try to tell the players what the power level of a card is? Isn't that the player's role? Also, AoA is no more "scaling in power" than Altruism is. AoA gets better the more attacks you play. Altruism gets better the more Holy cards you play. This is an illuminating point. But it doesn't explain why the "quality" ranking should be visually shown to the players. But your point is well made, the AI does need to know how to value it's own cards against one another.
I agree, I love using altruism in my priest builds - but would be hard pressed to get All out Attack into my warrior deck. However, a doubled 17 damage attack should probably be considered more powerful than drawing an extra card...
I agree 100%. Which only further illustrates my point that what makes a card better than another card is subjective to the player. Some players are going to think "MOAR DAMAGE! RAWR!!!" and others will think "MOAR CARDS! RAWR!!!" Certainly dealing 34 damage may be way more powerful than drawing a card, but shouldn't we decide that, not be told that? That's my question.
That's what I do. The power rating is a subjective thing - you build strategic decks finding synergy, not matter the power of the cards. So, I'd suggest not even bothering to look at the power bar if that irks you - I don't have any kind of problem with it. It's just nice to get anything shiny, because you instantly know it's probably interesting.
I'm a student of design. It's not that it "irks" me, it's that I'm interested in the reason behind it. I'm assuming it was decided at some point during development that they wanted to include a "quality" guide on the cards. I'm wondering why they did, and thinking about the impact that it has on card game. This is why I was trying to be clear that I'm not implying that they are "wrong", I'm more curious why they decided to do it at all. I agree that "ooh shiny!" effect is fun. That may be the whole reason by itself. But I wonder if some players will look at the quality of the cards and think "Why are they telling me this card is better than that card?"
So unfamilar players can look at cards at a glance and say "this card would be better than that one". Its a tool for players just poking around with cards and gives you an at glance look. Now some pros can make low rarity cards a base for strong combos and good players will favor strategy over rarity, but it just gives you an idea. I find if you treat it like a tool like anything else it doesnt seem so bad.
Yep, that's pretty much it. It's especially useful at the start of a round when you want to find your more critical cards, and comes in handy in other circumstances as well.
Umm, your example of Magic the Gathering is really flawed. MtG have Common/Uncommon/Rare quality ranking too. And if you take some cards that's very similar, you can really tell one is just better than the other. Yes there's some shifting of power level over time (Lightning Bolt in the old days doing 3, now a days you get Shock doing 2 for the same cost) so what's Rare worthy in the past might not be true today. But the point remains that, when compared quality with cards of the same type (in Card Hunter example, comparing Bludgeon to Trained Bludgeon) you can see that the one with higher quality is better (4 dmg Bludgeon vs 6 damage Trained Bludgeon) Quality also doesn't have to refers to the 'power' of the card itself, it can also be flexibility of it. AoA will still act as 4 damage attack even if you draw no other attacks, and its effective power only rise with stronger attacks (or special traits of the other attack). Altruism is a self-replacement + 1 attachment if you draw no holy card, or can't cast on allies (for example, THEY'RE DEAD/too far/out of sight), not to mention it's a 50/50 roll still whereas AoA (be it for the 4 damage or double power) is guaranteed (unless blocked, but that's another issue, also you can double up a Hard to Block attack or Penetrating one) Yes it's possible to build-around a certain card to make it shine, but that doesn't make the fundamental idea of the card changed, you simply adapted to that card. Similar to how there's people who built Battle of Wits deck and can win with it, but they also dedicate their whole deck to pretty much making it work that if someone can remove all Battle of Wits from the deck, it's doomed. Also about some lower level items that cost no talent being better than higher one with talent: Did you check the rarity on those items? I can find a lv 6 Legendary arcane item with 2 copy of Firestorm, no drawback, and no talent required, which would obviously be much better than many bronze talent, common lv 18 items.
It's possibly my view of the quality is skewed by the fact that I look at them solely through the lens of a wiki contributor. Seeing them in game may change my opinion. There may be an "AHA, I see why the did this" moment once I'm actually playing. Thanks for the reply Farbs. Was there any thought given to the idea that players may not like that the game is telling them what a good card is/isn't? I can see a visual representation of a card's power level being useful from an UI standpoint, and is even much more flexible when you're dealing with a purely digital environment (since you can just change a card's quality rating if deemed necessary, something a game like MtG couldn't do). Well, I don't think my example is "really flawed", but if you feel so, I'm happy to discuss it with you. Rarity is not always an indication of power, it's an indication of complexity. Read Mark Rosewater's excellent article series "Making Magic" about Magic design if you are interested in the topic of Magic card/set design. Yes it's true that rarer cards tend to be more powerful, but that's just because really complex cards tend to do more powerful things than simple ones. But this isn't always true. There are plenty of "Mythic Rare" magic cards that never get played competitively, while common cards from the same set routinely do. Example: One with Nothing is a rare, while Wild Nacatl (spelling?) is a common. One never gets played and the other is generally accepted as one of the best green one drop creatures ever. It's true that there are cards that are 'strictly' better, like Lightning Bolt and Shock as you describe. But MtG doesn't label the cards to try and show you "This card is better than that card", it's up to the player to make that decision, no matter how obvious it is. If the factor for what makes a card higher quality than another is purely objective (Such as two identical cards except one has higher damage than the other), then why the need to label the quality at all, anyone can see the difference in half a second. It's only on subjective cards that quality would be useful, and again, as I've said before, shouldn't we be the ones deciding what is/isn't average/good/great/ect? Flexibility IS a 'power' of a card. And I don't disagree with your statement here. Again though, why is the game trying to tell us one card is of a higher 'quality' than another, shouldn't we be the one deciding that. Which begs the question why is the card's "quality" even labeled? If I can adapt the card in such a way that it goes from being "average" to "great", why is the game telling me it's "average"? This only further proves my point. Many people may look at Battle of Wits and decide "This card is awful". Others may look at it and think "This card is AMAZING". So MtG doesn't try to label the card as "good" or "bad", it lets the players make this decision for themselves. Like I said, I don't have beta, so I can't really speak very well to this aspect of cards/items/deckbuilding. But I don't think it changes my point that a cards "quality" seems to me like something the players are supposed to figure out for themselves.
Well, if you haven't seen them in game, most of the time cards are minimized so you only see: -Shortened name (with the quality color) -Image of the card -split box if the card have multiple sections (like Ill-Fitting Armor) -Damage (roll dice roll required for some card)/range of it You do not see what a card really do, so with quality color you also get a hint of whether a card is 'more complex' than it seem. Take this item in shop that I'm staring at: Leaden Axe, It has: Note: Chops are attacks that can hit 2 targets. 1 Massive Chop (10 damage, 'silver' card, rare) - While this card is in your hand, your blocks rolls get a -2. 1 Strong Chop (6 damage, 'silver', common) - add 1 damage to other chops you play 1 Staggering Chop (6 damage, 'gold', uncommon) - targets discard their oldest card 1 Chop (5 damage, 'bronze', common) 1 Large Weapon ('black', common) 'trait'(must play, doesn't cost a turn, and draw a card after played) that if you try to attack next to a blocking terrain can sometimes cancel the attack (3+) 1 Slowed ('black', common) - Encumber 1, Keep Without opening up the item, I'd see 10 damage Massive Chop and 6 damage Strong Chop being the same color, and 6 damage Staggering Chop right next to them being gold. And I can also tell there's 2 bad cards in there thanks to the black name. (Side note, Obliterating Chop, a gold quality card, is also 10 damage but without side effects) Now this'd make me wonder why is Massive Chop, with 4 damage higher, is of the same quality the same as Strong Chop, and why is Staggering Chop a gold quality. (this is without opening up the full view, so I wouldn't know Massive Chop is also a Rare, while Strong Chop is a common) When in comparison, there's Trained Bludgeon (6 damage, bronze, common) and Strong Bludgeon (8 damage, bronze, RARE) that have the same quality, but is different thanks to rarity factor. And thanks to quality color, I'd also know that there's 2 'bad' cards that come with it too (note that Slowed is NOT a trait, drawback cards are not all traits) tl;dr - Quality helps differentiate the overall level of a card (well, there's rarity too, but we can't see that on a glancing view), and SOMEONE have to tell people cards like Slowed are bad (with black quality) and that cards like Obliteraing Chop is better than Massive Chop so it might as well be the Devs who have more information on the game than the rest of us.
I have no problem with it to begin with and when i see green or golden cards in my hand at the start of a round i get a little giddy. Just my input on the matter take it as you will.
I said the same thing when the blog came out about card quality. I could not understand why we have both Rarity and Quality. Both classifications denote a similar idea... the card's meta classification, for lack of better way of describing. But why both? If we already have rarity, do we really need quality? Is it not redundant? How many different ways do we need to chop up and place cards into different catagories? That is just my two cents. So I agree with the original poster. Not entirely sure why we need to introduce another way of dividing up cards. When I asked this in the blog post though I do not think the question was particularly well received.
Quality vs rarity - in many loot based games, rarity is a measure of how good an item is, in Cardhunter it sets complexity. So basically, rarity+quality together make up for the loot tiers in games such as WoW etc. Do we need rarity, do we need quality? These are tools for us as users and for the developers - to use or not to. I find it very helpful, and yes - I'm a ccg player and love deckbuilding, and won't get fooled by big numbers et c. I think you guys might think it's getting in the way of that, it doesn't.
KISS principle applies to card layout just as much as it applies to anything else. Right now card hunter cards are very high on the complexity scale for ccgs layouts (one set of colors for card types, a second set for quality, which is different from the symbol for rarity, damage is double coded as melee/magic/ranged and fire/crushing, quality and rarity for cards vs. quality and rarity for items etc.). Increasing complexity comes at a cost so the question when designing layouts isn't is this information useful but is this information important enough to accept the cost of the increased complexity. I vaguely remember a developer diary talking about about applying the same KISS principles to other areas of game play. http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/09/dev-diary-9-reactions/ Obviously reactions vs. card layouts are very different but the same ideas apply make things as simple as possible while perserving what is fundamentally important.
But rarity, in a game like MtG, is not subjective, it has a clearly defined meaning. I don't see it as a "tool" for the players, it's a statement of fact. "If you purchase a booster, you are more likely to open a giant growth than a shivan dragon". Now, if those cards has "quality" ratings on them, then they'd be subjective. What if I want to play lots of quick creatures, and try to kill my opponent fast? Then GG is a better card. What if I want to play a slow game, killing my opponents guys, and then finish with a huge fatty? Then Shivan Dragon is better. I agree that quality is an important tool for developers. Developers need to have some measurable way of rating cards against each other for all sorts of game design reasons. But that doesn't mean that the developer's thoughts on what makes a card better/worse should be exposed to the players on the cards. What I'm trying to drive at, is that part of the fun of a CCG is figuring out that Card A is better/worse than Card B (either in context, or in absolute terms). Having the cards labeled seems to stand in the way of that. I do concede that I haven't played the game, so when doing so, from a UI standpoint, I might come to appreciate my cards having the title bars color coded. But I'm concerned that we lose a fun aspect of CCGs, which is discovery!
Trust me, there's plenty of that - pvp is in it's infancy - and there's already a lot of different builds due to the cards we have available. The collection aspect makes it even harder to get the perfect setup - as you can't go straight online and get that perfect card you're missing. Also, just because a card has a certain power rating doesn't always mean it's a better card for the deck you're playing - that's all up to deckbuilding. Either way, it all makes intuitive sense to me in game, hope you'll get your chance to experience that part firsthand yourself soon!
One thing thats advanced a lot in modern game development is our understanding of what players see & compute first. TF2 showed us how we recognise silhouettes before any other detail & so on. So in card hunter you have many cards, mainly attacks with similar names, artworks and statistics. Adding to the complication you are building a deck using card suites, not individual cards, and when shown in suites/hand the cards are minimised. So when I open a suite (hover open a weapon) the first thing I see is card colours, all 6 are attacks, or 4 attacks & 2 buffs. Next thing is the qualities of each card and a moment later their names. So use that quality when looking through mountains of weapons & other items to decide whether this ITEM is worth it. Will I accept 3 poor quality cards for 1 gold? Depends, are the other two beige or bronze. Will I even consider this weapon for my build? No not enough silver quality cards. Add to this the hand displays. Your enemy plays obvious manouver and all attack cards are poor quality? Close in and finish the job. All gold? Run. In a game where decks are built in suites quality makes whether I have seen/remember the nitty gritty details of that card less important, and therefore faster.
