Let's Analyze the Cards!

Discussion in 'Off-Topic' started by Strumiker, Jul 23, 2011.

  1. devinallenaz

    devinallenaz Kobold

    I agree that you would apply it like equipment but I would bet that the availability of Superb Tactics to be added to a deck will be dependent on class/race/ level progression. The key difference between that and Puppeteer's Headband being a Mage card is that Superb Tactics wouldn't be acquired as loot like equipment would be, it would be either initially available or available on "level up" to certain races or classes, or all races and classes.

    Superb Tactics wouldn't be forced on anyone, but it wouldn't be available to everyone either.
     
  2. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    Wait, I think I'm on to something! Elves use green rouge instead of red! This makes so much sense!

    . . . Yes, I know that making fun of this spelling error has been done to death. I just can't help myself sometimes.

    Anyway. We seem to have a green card with Parry on it. When dev diary 2 mentioned "defenses or armor," it was possible that "defenses" meant green cards like this. And we see that
    Thus we are led to a total of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black. Logically, they could include white, gray, and possibly a few others (doom pink) and still have all colors be instantly recognizable.

    Mmmaybe Superb Tactics would be "acquired as loot," in the sense that it is something you take away with you at the end of an adventure ("experience"). It depends on the level of abstraction the developers choose. We're still being tantalized here.
     
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  3. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    Actually i like your theory.

    [​IMG]

    If your going off of this picture, then i guess you could say that the colors of the cards do kinda color coordinate. But by what means we wont quite know for sure or how. Perhaps they are colored off of whatever type they may be (spells purple, melee red, etc) But we wont know for sure until we get a broader sense of how they are put together and till we get a lot more cards to work with.

    Another thing that has been bothering me is how close the distance is between the rogue and wizard, like he cant hold 3 cards. Does he expand out when he gets another card or is he limited to just 2 in his hand?

    Edit: Sir Knight beat me to a lot of my posting =P
     
  4. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    I dont think it will be just restricted to rogues, but yes i do believe that specific green card might be something a rogue would use, maybe a warrior but not a wizard, and the purple cards might be something a warrior cant use
     
  5. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    Rouge.

    [​IMG]

    Rogue.

    [​IMG]
     
    Lance likes this.
  6. secran

    secran Mushroom Warrior

    Thank you Sir Knight for the pictorial guide to differentiating cosmetic products from your friendly neighborhood assassin/thieves!
    Because knowing is half the battle!
     
  7. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    *Sir Knight comes from behind with the stab* K.O.! *SurgeonFish falls to the ground, Sir Knight gives the thumbs up* You win!
     
  8. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    Good catch!

    Those are old card renders and many things have changed since we did those. Not saying green cards aren't still in the game though...
     
  9. Roshirai

    Roshirai Goblin Champion

    So, I know I promised last time that I'd post something of consequence, and I really was working on a thread about monetization/payment models, but something just occurred to me and I had to share it here.

    I'm actually a little ashamed of this: I remembered that the game trailer had card images and decided to grab screen captures. :p

    Apologies in advance for the poor quality of the grabs. I don't have Photoshop on my home computer, so the editing was alllll MS Paint, baby.

    Here's one of a Lightning Bolt card. It's obviously from an older iteration of the card layout, but it's still got some stuff we haven't seen before.

    bolt_capture.JPG

    The Damage and Range numbers are probably accurate, but aren't on the bottom of the card as they should be now. Most interesting to me: note the Star and Bolt icons on the corners of the card's image.

    This one is a really blurry image of an entire hand of cards.

    hand_capture.JPG

    Lightning Bolt is back in there, as are three cards that we haven't(?) seen before: Righteous Helmet, Blessed Armor and Healing Potion.

    A couple things of note here...
    • More icons, specifically a Shield and a Potion. When I originally started writing this post, I was going to conjecture that the Star here was related to the star on Maze of the Mind, and that we might start seeing mini-cards with Potion and Shield icons, too. I'm... significantly less keen on this idea now: I think instead that these icons have migrated to the card's "keyword box". Take a look at Arcing Zap, for instance. It has the keywords Magic and Electrical, which correspond all too well to the Star and Bolt icons on Lightning Bolt.
    • A bit more relevant, you can make out Armor and Heal statistics in the keyword box of the armor and potion cards. Presumably those have now migrated to the bottom of the card like Damage and Range and have icons of their own. This corroborates Sir Knight's earlier guess that Armor will probably show up at some point on a full card or a mini-card.
    Anyway, that's that. A side note for Jon et al: I definitely prefer the current card layout to the old one, though I imagine you guys will go through at least one more iteration before the game releases. It's the way of the world. :)
     
  10. secran

    secran Mushroom Warrior

    Excellent catch! So now we know that (so long as they haven't changed this from when the trailer was made) that the star means Maze of the Mind is a magic ability. But it's still brown, which is weird...
     
  11. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    Not sure if the star would be restricted to just magic, but its the best lead we have here. Also, new cards.

    [​IMG]

    Not sure what Pinning Spear does, but this looks really cool and would probably make this weapon viable as a choice unless fumble turns out to be an absolute flop.

    (P.S. BlueManchu group called it Drawback cards, im sad now :()
     
  12. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    Do we really know that? Note that the star only appears on the small card. On the large card, they actually list out the words Magic and Electrical. Should we believe that "Magic" is so very important that it must be denoted with a star, while no other terms need symbols? I begin to suspect that they've repurposed the star completely and we don't really know its function.

    Next!

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Oh, look. Maze of the Mind is still the only card with boxes on a different row. And the black cards still have boxes even though they are all empty. We are being told a bunch of nothing, and somehow the position of the nothingness matters! Would anyone care to froth at the mouth from the sheer speculation, or should I do it?

    Next!

    I'm thinking about the line "you can tell that Predictable Stab is an average power card from its paper-like title and that Pinning Spear Toss is a very powerful card from its gold title bar." So, "powerful." Not rare. In a game with no "mana cost" or anything, I presume that this is a value judgment. Why is it needed? Will characters be limited in what they can wield? Will it be used to determine a "power level" for a deck for such functions as competitive play? In that latter case, we can expect to see "power" ratings change once the players get their hands on this game and devise unexpected strategies.
     
    Jon likes this.
  13. Roshirai

    Roshirai Goblin Champion

    Yep. I was pretty excited when I found that, until I noticed that they probably just changed those icons to keywords. :)
    At the very least, we now know Maze of the Mind is not a Drawback, or at least, not a standard one. I feel like the black boxes at the bottom have to do with some completely different mechanic that hasn't really even been alluded to yet. Grabbing a Jon quote from the blog...
    Maybe that's got something to do with the black boxes on Maze of the Mind? Maze searches your deck for Drawbacks and forces you to play them? Maze does terrible things to your head if you happen to draw it in the same hand as a Drawback?

    Hey, while we're speculating wildly...
    That quote, coupled with the 36 card decks on some of the previously released screenshots, makes me think that characters really do have enough "slots" for 36 cards apiece.

    Cover your eyes at this point if you have a weak stomach for baseless speculation.

    Pretend that a deck is generally split four ways: Attack cards, Defense cards, Movement cards and Support cards. If we consider a "slot" a chunk of three cards, and try to give each of those categories three slots apiece, we might get something like this...
    What I'm basically saying here is this... Since a deck should in most cases have a reasonable balance of cards that allow your character to function, and since it's kind of impractical (and thus far completely unknown) for a single weapon or staff to have 9-12 cards associated with it, I'm guessing anywhere from 3-6 of a character's "slots" are intrinsic and not affected by equipment. These may very well be the "traits" people were talking about earlier in the thread, and they would provide appropriate card suites to round out a character.

    Check out this (admittedly old) screenshot...

    [​IMG]

    Notice the Warrior is equipped with a Giant Axe, but clearly appears to have access to an Anvil Strike card. An Anvil Strike sounds like a very un-Axelike attack, so it's entirely possible that's a basic attack card that the Warrior's traits provide him with! OK, so it's also possible he's wearing, like, Blacksmithing Gloves that provide that, but I'm trying to make an argument here! :)

    ...Oh, God, this post got really long all of a sudden. I'm so sorry. :(

    One last psychic shot in the dark: if we assume that the system works at least slightly how I've outlined it here, I'm gonna guess that a Warrior might start with a card suite called "Tactics" that provides some basic Support cards. As he levels up, however, that trait might morph into "Superb Tactics", which provides a different (and more powerful) card suite that includes the Inspirational Thinking card that was previewed this week.

    Phew.
     
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  14. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    Roshirai. Have psychic babies with me
     
  15. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    At this stage, I'm wondering if we should just come up with a few concept pictures and let you guys design a game for us via speculation.
     
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  16. SurgeonFish

    SurgeonFish Automaton Moderator Staff Member

    Lol, i would totally do that! You would get so many ideas from us with just a sketch drawing of something so vague. We could even write your stories! I'm visualizing it as i type.

    [Jon posts a picture of a badly drawn tree and asks "What is this?"]
    "Oooh! its the tree of life! Heroes must fight their way to the tree using their bear hands(a previous fight with bears that drop bear hand cards) against slimes and old men with sticks to get to the tree in order to heal their escorted companion (companion of a crippled old lady with alzheimer's who keeps wandering off) and at the tree they must face a monster made of fire who uses water magic! Its brilliant!
     
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  17. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    I think I've heard of that game . . .

    But seriously, you got it all wrong. We're not anywhere near "campaign"-level decisions at this time.

    No, Jon was showing us the flow diagram for the new battle setup. See, the player and the AI each start at the bottom, germinating seeds based on the intermixed genetic factors in their card suites. Then one plays the "tree" and the other plays the "strangling vine." As the battle goes on ("grows on"), each side's cards are stacked up in conflicting layers at "growth points" up the trunk and out the branches, with the best-played ones sprouting buds. Then at the end each side can sell their successful flowers and fruit for Card Cash, with a 115% bonus if they make an online payment to Blue Manchu at battle resolution.

    And Card Hunter has been announced as an expansion for FarmVille.
     
    Lance likes this.
  18. Rising Zan

    Rising Zan Mushroom Warrior

    I could tottaly see that happening.
     
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  19. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    The forum has now passed 1,000 messages. The fact that we have broken the four-figure mark is a testament to the power of crazy people speculating into the air. Who wants to go next??
     
  20. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    Stab. Stab. Stab.

    http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/09/simple-thrust-preview/

    [​IMG]

    Excellent, "Step" means we can have movement on cards which may not themselves be movement cards. Of note is the fact that this "keyword" system means movement-on-a-not-movement-card is a special rule: the designers put effort into not including both a "movement" box and a "damage" box on the same card. This implies that there really will be just two boxes at the bottom of any card (here damage and range), at most.

    But does Step really work the same as any other movement? Is it like Escaping Run, where you have to stop if you get next to an enemy? Or is it like Scamper in that you don't have to stop? The description of usage implies that you can move for a backstab, so it may ignore enemy positions.

    I . . . I'm now thinking of making a deck almost exclusively out of cards like this. Stab. Stab. Stab.
     

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