Seems like that could be a lot of racial cards. And some of the cards are punishing in multiples. A Dwarf with multiple Toughness, or an Elf with multiple Elven Tickeries both as an example. The card selection is interesting. As it currently sits, the UI is growing on me. It's simple and quick, but works pretty well. I'd just like to loop through it 2 or 3 times to build a slightly bigger deck. I also tend to think that building a deck over multiple rounds of selections helps boost the the skill testing aspect of the draft. One thing you have me thinking about is the number of choices... Honestly, how many choices do you really make for each character? I feel that in a lot of these, I'm really only forced to make a choice on a couple of the cards. Often it's a clear choice to take the better card between the two. Personally I like it more when I have more choices, right now it's a bit binary and binary choices are often simple.
Or the most wizards... or the best cards. I've played maybe 20 matches of Quick Draw and 'most warriors wins' is definitely not true in my experience. I think a cool way to do it would be to make sure each team has the same total HP.
I think that my ideal implementation would be pick 1 of 3, so that you end up with 1 gold, 3 silver, 3 bronze, 3 paper, 1 black. Also, a few cards need to be banned due to small deck size: Imp. Nimbus, Toughness, and Demonic Feedback.
After a night of sleep --> Battle log: discarded cards should not show during drafting. After the same night of sleep --> ladder and draft tourneys only need 1 draft phase instead of drafting EVERY single game. Yh, like what nc did recently...so there really isn't a need to limit a 5 card deck per char. During the setup of the wiki last year, I experimented with some with card/item classifications schemes. Dug those up, dusted and generated a draft pack of sorts. Note that the following is JUST a suggestion for use as an entry point of discussion, I used the basic BREAD draft ruleset. Yh, I should have picked based on card quality/rarity...but let's just assume for the sake of discussion and maybe future testing purposes that this is a viable draft block. Forgive my formatting ! Suggestion Draft Pack: Burning Cauldron Number of cards: 72 Draft phases: 3 Draft pick per char per draft phase: choose 4 of 8 (2 x choose 2 of 4) Total cards per char: 12 Firestorm, Volcano Mind Leak, Brain Burn, Memory Loss, Shrug It Off Weak Block, Counterspell, Smoke Bomb Fire Spray, Glob Of Flame, Hot Spot, Wall Of Fire, Magma Spray, Kindler, Ember Spray Combustible, Defensiveness, Squeamish, Ouch! Fiery Stab, Powerful Hack, Devastating Blow Wavering Faith, Staggering Chop Desperate Block, Shield Block, Parry, Surging Shield Block, Jarring Block, Duck Perforating Strike, Sundering Strike, Able Bludgeon, Skillful Strike, Strong Hack, Blind Rage, Touch Of Pain, Quick Reactions Large Weapon, Reaching Swing, Wimpy, Backbiting Strike Unholy Wellspring, Greater Heal, Team Heal Holy Presence, Purge, Cleansing Ray Scuttle, Team!, Walk, Team!, Forward Thinking, Martyr Blessing, Help The Weak, Consecrate Ground Minor Heal, Bungled Heal Team Run, Healing Dash, Reflexive Teleport Charge, Flanking Move, Quick Run Shuffle, Trip Reliable Mail Mystical Wyrmhide Dynamic Armor Sparkling Cloth Armor, Holy Armor, Inspiring Armor Reliable Hide Armor
I want to throw in support for either an increased deck size or being able to choose more than two options for a given selection round. I ran into multiple black card choices that were completely debilitating for the class choosing. The standout worst was having to choose between Trip and Cowardly for a warrior. Either basically makes him useless for the match and make it an almost forgone conclusion of a loss.
So just ran a game against Gary and I had a priest with Soothing Darkness, Bad Luck, Trip and Arrogant Armor. Why was this significant? Because after temporarily removing the first two cards from the deck by playing them, there weren't enough cards left in the deck to draw a full hand and Trip would get drawn every turn. It would be discarded by Arrogant Armor, but then replaced by the only card now in the deck - itself. So at the beginning of every turn I would draw and discard Trip 5 times until I reached my draw limit. I appreciated the draw limit from preventing the infinite inescapable loop, but it also meant that no other draw card in any other character's deck would work. Just something to think about.
After a night of sleep --> Battle log: discarded cards should not show during drafting. After the same night of sleep --> ladder and draft tourneys only need 1 draft phase instead of drafting EVERY single game. Yh, like what nc did recently...so there really isn't a need to limit a 5 card deck per char. ^^ More cards would be good, as we have all already said, and also less black cards would be good.
The mode is very interesting. I love it, great work. But the deck size needs to be increased, some cards are really throwing the balance of things off (damage traits, parries, ...)
I hope they're logging the choices people are making. This game mode is an excellent way to see exactly which cards players think are over/under powered.
It is highly context-dependent. I've thrown away multiple amazing blocks because it allowed me to take Dropped Guard over Trip, for instance. But yes, if a card is never selected it says something about its strength.
Yes, some cards are extremely stronger than they normally are if you can draw them frequently with consistency, so though I think the choice metrics give an idea, they don't tell the whole story.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's really helping shape a great new addition to the game. I think so anyway. I originally wrote this as a reply to a PM, but I figure it really belongs here intead:
erm, this should really have been in the first post. Now I get your drift. a) You are not aiming for a draft game, its more of a quickie slot machine thingy. b) I've played a few more against actual humans, it was getting duller for me. Reason: predictability. I could read the opponent's discards after the first turn and figure out how to break his build and gameplay. And I pretty much knew if there was a chance of winning by then. I could also memorize all 30 cards, wasn't difficult... at least for me. Erm, kinda disappointed if indeed quick draw was intended to be an iphone app. Hope that a proper draft game would be implemented in future. Cards, items or chars doesn't matter. It should push the boundary of tcgs and demand players to have luck, skill and memory in order to be a draft champion. Sorry for this negative critique.
Hey no worries, I'm interested in all opinions. Thank you, in fact. This mode came about because it was low hanging fruit. I built it in an evening after work, whereas a proper item-based multi-game draft system would take weeks. This doesn't mean we won't ever build a proper draft system, it just means we get to play this too. Another way to think about this is that I'm implementing the quicky slot machine thingy first, but once it's in place then making the draw count variable, as specified by the scenario, becomes the next low hanging fruit. It's still not an epic multi game tournament or a test of your item arranging skills, but I think it's quite a lot closer to the game you want.
Yes, I completely understand that it is a rough/initial draft of a draft. But reading the PM'ed reply, your problem definition wasn't what I expected. I don't get the part of making the 'draw count variable' neither do I get the 'a test of your item arranging skills'. Maybe we have different understanding of what drafting is. I'll reserve judgement/critiques until the next version. I'm actually quite happy and surprised that the in-game discard engine could be modified to support draft picking. This saves the hassle of having to drag and drop items onto character sheets. Not having a sidedeck is a pity but not a big deal. I'd even encourage that the final form as card drafting if possible.
Having now played a few quickdraw games, I can understand what the hype is about. This mode is AWESOME
In some ways, I feel this type of format may work better than regular item drafting for Card Hunter. The short, specific card decks are an asset to creating a reliable strategy. A hallmark of better draft formats is the ability to draft many different types of strategies. While Card Hunter does have different strategies available for the classes, often they are reliant on only a handful of specific items. Take for example a vampire priest, or a lava wizard, or even a chop warrior. All are variant strategies that can be built, but they require a significant number of cards that in many cases only exist on less than 1 percent of the total items. The odds of those strategies ever appearing in a more normal draft format (that includes a majority of the items) is highly unlikely. That leaves players drafting the same types of strategies over and over which is going to feel very dull and repetitive. The one thing Quick Draw does very well is provide you alternate strategies often based on selecting just a single card. Did your warrior draft a huge attack card, abuse it to win. Did your priest draft Bless, well I bet you could abuse that too. It's very luck dependent and a swingy format, but it also creates really fun highs and lows. While the format is very fun, I'm not sure it's all that skill intensive, and one thing I think people look for in a draft is a format that layers additional decision making choices onto the basic play skills players already have. For example, Jon mentioned not being able to keep track of 30 cards over the course of a longer Quick Draw draft, but those are precisely the types of abilities that separate the better drafters from the average. A good draft format shouldn't be afraid of increasing the game's difficulty curve, and that's something I think is missing here.
