Currently, you can look at a Fire card and know it's a Fire card and look at an Acid card and know it's an Acid card* and look at a Cold card and know it's a Cold card with no doubts whatsoever...but Arcane cards are often indistinguishable from Electrical cards. Attached is a good sampling of this. A few suggestions of my own. Others hopefully have some as well: Change the color on Arcane effects (on the cards) Use a consistent color on Arcane cards (e.g., purple) Use purple** with white highlights, rather than white with purple highlights--as this just looks like electricity Reserve words that refer to electricity (i.e.,"Zap") for Electrical cards only Change the art for Arcane to not look like jagged lightning whenever possible. Have it be dripping or blocky or made up of little dots or swirling or whatever. It would really be a good idea to go through and make sure that all the colors and effects and names are consistent within and between each of the damage types. That could probably apply to melee with penetration, slashes, chops, bashes, etc. as well But that's more about consistency and polish (and good game design) than the more important goal of reducing confusion. Also, presuming that the plan is for Card Hunter to be around for a long time, you want to set up these "rules" at inception, and not find the game in need of a cosmetic overhaul 2 years from now after expansions have further clouded the distinctiveness of the damage/attack types. I do understand that color-blindness is an issue, but if I can't tell the difference, they certainly won't be able to, so they would be no worse off under a consistent system than an inconsistent one, and in all likelihood would still benefit. [And going to a different geometric effect such as swirls or dots would obviate any color-blindness issues.] I've also uploaded a couple quick "Arcane" effects. * Boiling Armor should be green, so there are perhaps a few exceptions. But Boiling Armor doesn't do damage so AFAIK it's not that important what damage type it is. ** Currently there's a very light violet shading, which is what I'm referring to. If you use something like a "real" purple or violet, you won't have that issue.
I think it's a pretty good idea. Any quick visualization information you can give the player will always help.
I agree with this. I find myself constantly having to zoom in on card, to check if it's arcane or lightning i'm dealing with.
I've wondered about visuals. I don't know what can be done in that regard beyond what they've already done, though of course you folks have suggestions. I've wondered about the names. You say you have to zoom in: only cards that have "Spark" in their name are electrical. You don't have to look at the keywords at all once you realize this. So . . . is there some way to make the name more obvious so that people can realize this? You know, so it can be intuitive? It's a pity that the word "electrical" is so long, because otherwise I'd seriously suggest putting it in the title: "Electrical Spark," "Short Electrical Spark," "Long Electrical Spark." No more confusion! But terrible when you get to "Devastating Electrical Spark," which would never fit on the card. Would including just "Electrical Spark" and a few others help you realize all Sparks are Electrical? Or would it make it worse? And what about eliminating the confusion caused by Spark Inductor and Spark Generator? These cards TELL YOU to be confused about Sparks, because they have an important secondary effect for Arcane cards. What if these were renamed somehow? Or what if their Arcane secondary effect were removed and put in some other Trait completely? Anyway, my point is that changes in language could help.
All good points. It's a little late in production to make big sweeping changes, but I'm going to change all the Zap card art to look non-electrical at least.
Ah Sir Knight, i see what you say. Guess i have been distracted by all the other stuff i had to learn while leveling up. I didn't really take my time to go into details comparing names of the cards to the effects. The change to the artwork is good news indeed specially when it comes to players playing the game for the first time.
The colour change is a good suggestion, reserve blue for electrical attacks and have arcane attacks be purple (or yellow or some other colour). I also find "Zap" a slightly unfortunate choice of name for arcane attacks, as mentioned above it does bring electricity to mind. However, when thinking about this I couldn't really come up with a better name to suggest instead. Besides, I don't think it too me too long to learn that if a card had "Zap" in the title then it was arcane.
I'm rather shocked it wasn't in this thread but someone suggested "Blast" for arcane spells which I liked a lot better than Zap for the confusion factor.
Unfortunately blasts are AoE's, not directed, so that's not ideal. @ Sir Knight, We do understand that, but what we're saying is that once you "realize" the keyword tells you the damage type you quite reasonably assume that zap is electrical, because the word zap is electrical and the art looks electrical. I would assume the same thing for spark or shock or whatever, but I would be wrong 33% of the time. Even if you were 100% right and we were 100% wrong, they really don't want the game to involve players having to come to the forums to read posts from helpful players to find out how the cards work, or to carefully analyze every card until they "get" it. It is just better for everyone if the cards/rules/etc. are consistent and intuitive.
Wha? No they aren't. Blast is already a word that is used by 8 cards. Only one of those cards is not arcane damage and that's a one square acid terrain spell without any direct damage at all. There are no AoEs with Blast in the name according to the wiki, or my current card collection (there may be some I haven't seen?). You were likely thinking of Acid blast though... I always mix up blast and spray when playing myself.
A lot of these illutrations were done long before we even had cards that took advantage of arcane/electrical designations, which has not helped. I just got done changing all the zaps and arcane damage cards to have a purpley effect illustration, and made them all look non-electrical. Jon and I are thinking about changing the word "zap" to something less electrical sounding too. Sounds easy, but there are a lot of knock-ons from doing this so we have to be careful.
The two terms that come to mind are "ray" and "beam." Of the two I prefer "ray." While technically both describe continuous paths (a ray of light, a beam of light), the latter to me suggests something laser-like more than the former. (EDIT) Of course, Bolt is used for a number of non-electrical attacks, but in my opinion still retains the electrical connotation - a bolt of lightning. Blast on the other hand is, as far as I can tell, used exclusively for single target attacks - Acid Blast, Sorcerous Blast, Force Blast, etc. So Blast could be an appropriate term to use. However, if BM decide to tie in cards to what are currently Zaps (versus Arcane in general), it's probably a better idea to use something unique.
I've always enjoyed the word "Pulse" Arcane Pulse Pulse Wave Short Pulse Sorcerers Pulse While this clearly has no place in the game, "Mojo" is a fun word to throw around. Go ahead, try it.
