Just heard about this after PAX, and I really like what I've seen so far. The art style is a clever throwback, and the game play seems quite intriguing. I've made my way through most of the dev diaries, but I'm still trying to wrap up my understanding of your game concept. Characters abilities, or at least the cards they have access to, seem to be defined by the weapons, items, skills and or talents you’ve equipped. If I understand this, it’s like a CCG, but you don’t actually collect the specific cards in your deck, rather you collect items that have cards associated with them. So what exactly are you collecting as a player? Items/skills for your characters or do you also have to collect the cards they use (like purchasing booster packs or something similar)? It sounds like you “earn” new items and experience at the end of a module. Is the reward random, a specific set of items, or a combination of the two? Is the reward better or worse depending on your performance? And would you need to replay modules in order to earn multiples of an item? Single player seems like a classic RPG to me. You play different module with your characters, leveling them up and finding items they can equip. Is multiplayer intended to kick in when you have maxed out your party? Is it essentially a PvP with your maxed out levels characters and their items? Or is multiplayer a cooperative version of the game where different players control different characters?
I too was curious about your final question. I would think multi player would have level caps, so you can bring any character between level 10-15 in one game, 15 - 20 in another game, etc.... Just guessing. As far as whether you control one or multiple characters in an online game, hmm. One character would be awesome for the social/cooperation aspects. If I had to guess though, since the game is usually played with one player controlling a party that would be the default setting.
I've lost track of the answer, but I'm reasonably sure it's like you'd expect: random-ish stuff, probably biased by the type of module it is. I don't have a direct quote on it. But I do have an answer for this part: The most recent word is in here: http://www.cardhunter.com/2012/03/borgo-the-talented/ Where they say "In balanced multi-player we just pick a standard level and give you the talents that you’d have at that level." So you can have whatever cards you've collected, but everyone is restricted by the same talent availability to equip said cards.
Thanks for the replies. I managed to finish the rest of the diaries last night, so i understand about as much as I can. It's a very unique game, but there's no doubt I'll be playing this. The leveling concept is interesting to me. Typically, competitive F2P games have used levels as a way to create tiers within their games. Something like League of Legends, where you need to max out your profiles level to really compete in the higher levels of play. F2P games often let players speed through these tiers by purchasing experience boosts (or multipliers), which really illustrates that their levels are a grinding mechanic you can just pay to speed up. Other games, things like WoT or MWO, have you leveling in game items for similar purposes. Collectible games often focus on growing your collection of stuff instead. Such as with your typical CCG where you buy boosters. Here this seems to be the magic items you can buy or loot. The mechanics for talents (the colored orbs) seem to limit how many rare or uncommon cards/items you can put into a "deck" in this case. So higher level play may simply require more items or more items of higher rarities (which seems to be typical for collectible games). This may truly be an old school game model. A great single player game that looks really fun, and then multiplayer gives you something to do with all your stuff you got playing.
