Pros and Cons

As I flesh out the meat and bones of this card game, I want to make sure it's a blast to play. What are the pros and cons from a 'fun' gameplay standpoint of a card game and a fighting game relevant to my idea, and what can be taken from them? Long post incoming.

Magic: The Gathering Pros and Cons;

+ Collecting. The cards all have value, different rarities / availability, and some slick artwork. 

+ Deck Variety. Tons of cards, tons of options. There are competitive decks, casual decks, crappy decks and janky decks. The amount of cards also means there's generally some card(s) that counter the "best" deck in the format. 

+ Wide gameplay options. There are generally lots of decisions to be made in the game, especially in draft and Type 2, and it's a far cry from the rudimentary rock-paper-scissors base. There are also many ways to trick your opponent or earn victory, some of which being hilarious and/or embarassing, which make for great storytelling even after the game has ended.

- "Mana Screwed". To play cards, you need to use mana, the resource of the game. You will inevitably play some games against people who could have little idea of the deeper gameplay going on, but if your hand is devoid of mana, you either risk playing that hand or you go one card down. The VS and WoW card systems have anti-mana screwed mechanics; you can play any card as a resource, though "plot twists" / "locations" (VS) and "quests" (WoW) were much preferred to be played in your resource row.

- Too much variety? The wide variety of cards leads to a select few cards being top dollar, and 80% of the cards players own stuffed in closets wasting space. Some cards have similar effects, but one is just "better" than the other for obvious reasons. 

Capcom vs. SNK 2 Pros and Cons

+ Options! An extremely wide cast of characters to select from for a fighter; many familiar faces across the board. You get to pick up to three of them for your team. You also select one of six different "grooves", which applies basic rules from six past fighters (3 Capcom, 3 SNK) that your team plays under. For example, some let you roll, air block, and so on. Finally, you have four points of 'ratio' to spend on your team of 1-3 characters, with ratio 1 characters being weakest and ratio 4 being a fucking house. (One ratio 4, however, means you only get one character.)

+ 1v1 "Teamwork". My A-Groove Iori might have a tough time against your C-Groove Blanka, but I have Cammy coming up next if Iori goes down, and she does fine against him. (That might be complete bullshit but you get the idea.)

+- - Tiers. The higher tiers in this game, while certainly nothing as excusive and godlike as in Marvel, are still very dominant. You'll never see a Kyosuke in an American tournament past round 1, and you'll see plenty of Sagats and Blankas. That being said, the mid tiers can still be relatively competitive, and it's always refreshing and exciting to watch skilled mid tier players like Combofiend (Rock/Rolento/Eagle) and Buktooth (Iori/Morrigan/Hibiki) run their game.

- No real team synergy. There's no tagging, no combined attacks, nothing outside of some special win quotes. From a gameplay standpoint this is more of a preference thing, but it's worth noting for the purposes of my game.

- Custom combos. The dreaded A-Groove. Its main draw is getting a full super bar, and then activating your Custom combo mode, where upon first activating you get some invincibility, and any hit landed while in the mode is turned into a fucking painful (and ridiculous looking) combo that ends in a super. It can be a very all or nothing mode (sometimes the worst thing that'll happen is you'll break their guard gauge and take off 15% anyway), and while it does get the crowd talking, I find it stretches the risk / reward balance too wide. To see some examples with Bison, check out the link below. The action begins at 1:03.

M. Bison makes babies cry

What have we learned? Card collecting and dispariging card rarities piques interest, finding the right variety amount is crucial, developing multiple decision options past rock paper scissors makes for more fun and interesting gameplay, keep the power of your cards and mechanics in check, and whatever do you, don't get mana screwed.

Teaming Up

Ever since playing Marvel vs. Capcom (the original), I have toyed with design ideas surrounding team based fighting games. Characters on your team having passive abilities that work when tagged out; team attacks ala Project Justice (Rival Schools), but enhanced ones, in terms of both effectiveness and visuals, with certain members of the cast; having players pair up certain characters whose abilities, both active and passive mix well, much like a Magic player would pair strong cards in a combo deck.

RPG elements in fighting games have historically been a mixed bag; Gem Fighter, for instance, has items flying around the screen at times, and I never found it adding much to gameplay. On the other hand, Battle Fantasia characters have visible "hit points", which, when set against a background with an "Item Shop", makes a whole lot of sense. Warzard went so far as having an intricate password system, through which your character actually gained levels, growing stronger and learning new moves.

In my card game, with four characters per player and two characters "in play" at a time, I have a lot of design options to make in regards to incorporating card and team synergy. Characters which pay life to use their main attacks teaming with lifegain characters, characters who use only magic-based attacks amplified by magic boosting characters, and the aforementioned team attacks are all on the drawing board. 

Photos and Lightning Frogs

Took some photos with a friend today by a railroad. This was the end of the white in my white shoes, but it was well worth it.

Photo Gallery

Afterwards, it was time to check out the fresh Blazblue arcade cabinet in Glen Burnie. Blazblue is one of the newest fighting games to be released; it's Guilty Gear's spiritual successor, and it's largely only available in Japanese arcades until this Summer. That is, except for a scant few American locations, like Glen Burnie. 

Blazblue takes the movement and damage of Guilty Gear, tones it down a bit, and adds the traditionally 3D wakeup games of forward, backward, and neutral teching, putting an unfamiliar spin on wakeups for a 2D fighter. The game is gorgeous in Widescreen HD, and the quirky design from GG holds true in BB. My character has a wind button that influences character and projectile momentum, a fat bat pet, an animated umbrella, lightning frogs, living pumpkins and cannonballs that turn into lightning rods which, of course, energize at the push of a button. It's wild stuff, and that's just one character. Check it out at the Power Gamer in Glen Burnie if you're interested.

Weekend Musings

Spent Sunday at Lake Artemesia by College Park building up texture and forest pictures for my storybook animation. Spring needs to really kickstart its colors; the lake area was pretty drained of color for the most part. 

My card game's rough draft is complete, and I should be playtesting it hopefully over the next few days. It combines that traditional single-player-RPG combat foundation of four party members, and in addition gives the players a deck of cards as well to work with. I went back and played a few minutes of some older RPGs to really get the feel for how combat flows, notably Final Fantasy 3 and 7, Pokemon, and Super Mario RPG. (Side note, Mario RPG's music is fucking boss.) I'll have to play rounds of Magic, VS, and UFS, and see what mechanics are / aren't fun. (Off the top of my head, I will not be adding a mana-screwed feature.)

I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I want this legitimately playable in paper or not. By that I mean, do players make decisions at the same time, or do players take turns with priority which gives one player a potential advantage over the other. This is certainly the case in Magic, where going first can be all the difference between a win and a loss. A lot of RPG combat systems give characters or attacks a designated speed which determines what character attacks first. In paper card game form, it doesn't work so elegantly. ("I'll do attack A on your character." "Then I'll do attack B on your character because it hits him first." "You're a giant asshole." etc) It would, at least, limit options and give faster attacks higher value. Worth doing? We'll see.

Designing a Card Game

Throughout the past several years of playing competitive games and taking classes on game theory and design,  (one of which having me build games from scratch,) it occurred to me that making a ruleset for an enjoyable competitive card game was a challenge I wanted to conquer. Maybe the following notes will help you get your gears turning too. With that, what are key elements of a competitive card game? 

-Deck, obviously; A high deck minimum (Say 80 cards vs 40) likely mean less abilities for each individual card.

-Characters; which do the combat for you. 

-Abilities; which exist on characters as well as on their own individual cards.

-Resources; which are consumed to use abilities.

-Fair, intriguing, and fun combat; where you can blow your opponent out of the water or conversely get your face smashed in.

-Balanced turn and drawing systems; self explanitory.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that a card game is that at its core, it's all about card knowledge and decision making. I know what cards I have, I might know some cards he has; but what's in his hand? What's left in his deck? What decision do I make based on what I know? 

More to come.

Dissecting Street Fighter 4: Sagat

After the release of any fighting game, rabid players will session with the game for hours on end in an attempt to learn their character(s) playstyle and matchups inside out. Information is shared and learned amongst the community through casual and tournament play at all levels, and after a period of time, a tier list emerges. With Street Fighter 4 having been out on console for a month today and out in arcades since last Fall, the list has emerged.

S +
Sagat, Viper, Gouki, Zangief
S
Ryu, Boxer, Rufus, Blanka
A
Chun li, Dictator, Ken, Dhalsim, Abel, Honda, Fuerte
B
Claw, Guile

(Tougeki Damashii Magazine, Feb. 2009)

While still a relatively young game, and these lists can and will evolve, Sagat is for sure the best character. What makes Sagat high tier? What makes other characters not as good? Let's take a look at Sagat.

In every game Sagat has been in, his moves are relatively unchanged and is consistently an above average character. However, he's not always a strong pick for the same reasons. Old Sagat in Street Fighter 2: Super Turbo is a monster both because of how quick Tiger Shot is and how fast he recovers. Watch a Capcom vs. SNK 2 Sagat in tournament play, however, and you'll barely see Tiger Shots used. What makes Sagat so strong in CVS2 is his wild set of normals, helmed by the dreaded crouching Fierce punch. 

In Street Fighter 4, however, Sagat is a little bit of both. His rounds generally starts by dropping the opponent down to 70% health from afar before they even get in close to him as a result of Tiger Shot hit and chip damage (like ST Sagat). Up close, in addition to the threat of Tiger Uppercut, Sagat can chain many normals into Tiger Shot or Tiger Knee, the latter doing great chip as well as leaving both players in a neutral state. Sagat's Ultra is devastating, and is one of the lucky characters who can cancel their Uppercut into an Ultra. That alone practically makes him worth playing.

Sagat is at his most vulnerable at mid range, where his normals can't reach and his Tiger Shots can be jumped and punished. However, again Sagat possesses one of the best normals in the game; the standing Roundhouse (s.RH). Other characters have similar s.RH's like Dictator and Claw, but none of them have the reach or high angle of Sagat's, nor do they hit twice. The Sagat s.RH is just the right angle for anyone jumping at him at mid range, making a perfect anti-air in one of his weaker areas. Between Tiger uppercut/s.RH for anti air and Tiger Shots, s.LK, c.MK, Tiger Knee etc, it's extremely frustrating to approach Sagat. By the time you've knocked him down, most players likely have already taken good damage and spent a lot of effort getting there that they walk right into an Uppercut, and the positioning resets.

Sagat may be the leading man of SF4, but not every fighting game King (or Queen) is the best in the same way. In Guilty Gear, Eddie is the best because he commands space extremely well, and if he gets you to block an attack, chances are high you'll be taking 40% damage at minimum. However, he's a tall guy, so he's easy to combo and mix up, and he has no reversal attacks to escape pressure. In addition, he banks on having his shadow pet out to function, and it's possible to kill the pet and keep him from calling him out. In Hokuto No Ken, Toki is hard to catch, harder to block correctly, and even harder to get away from. He has suffocating pressure, and when he hits you, you're still stuck in it and one step closer to being Fatal KOd. 

Sagat doesn't have any special attributes that set him apart from the rest of the SF4 cast; he is the best because everything he has is good. Good specials and normals, good range game, good up close game, good damage, reversal, health, and ultra. Rufus has a lot of good going for him, but he has no game from range. Dhalsim has an excellent range game and can do some funny tricks up close, but Ultras can hit him for 70% damage, he's easy to dizzy, and his reversal is terrible when cornered. Sagat has it all, which raises the question; which is a better top tier character to have? The character that excels across the board, or the character who has a handful of incredible moves or mechanics? It's worth thinking about. 

Regardless, Sagat is not so good he cripples the game. Top 8 at Japan's National Tournament in mid January, consisting of the best 128 players in Japan, had two Sagats (RF and Vegakare) and one each of Rufus, Chun, Viper, Boxer, Dhalsim, and Dictator; RF took Sagat to the finals but lost to Dhalsim. At America's most recent major, Final Round XII in Atlanta, only Long Island Joe's Sagat made Top 8, while one Boxer, one Viper, three Rufus players and TWO Hondas got there. It's a good sign for Street Fighter 4's character balancing, especially set against the Chun/Yun fest that was Street Fighter 3.