A new name for our combat system

"Card Combat" has always felt like the wrong term when trying to describe what I'm envisioning for the final version of our skill system. In my opinion, to better market the game and distance our terminology from 'card games' we should come up with new terms for everything and try to fit them into the context of the lore, so it'll be more interesting for new players to discover.

For one thing first of all; "Glyphs" seem to be sticking for the "cards" themselves, so in any instance of referring to the actual skills popping up on the hot bar we just need to call them glyphs and get used to it.
In conjunction with that, I suppose we should be calling the "deck" system something more along the lines of something like the... Random Glyph Sorting system (RGS). I dunno; I just don't like having the word "deck" in there at all.

In that regard what should we start calling a "deck" in the first place? At its basics its just the assortment of skills that make up your current combat build...so maybe something like your... Assorted Random Tactical Skills, or ARTS for short.

The skill trees lend themselves to being linked to the 3 sigils designed early on for Magic, Crafting, and Combat, so some term we can link to the sigils like "sigil line" or something might be the most appropriate choice here.

Thoughts? Opinions? What do you think we should call the combat system in SotA?

 

Personally I think it is extremely quick and fast paced so I would recommend Fast Assorted Random Tactical Skills... Oh wait...

 

I liked the UU runes style magic system...

Dont know what to call the card combat yet.

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It is a card system. Desperately trying to change the description only calls greater attention to it, and gives the impression that it's something to be embarrassed about.

It's innovative. We should seek to OWN it.

 

Its sign combat.
Its picture perfect.
Its banner battles.
Herald warfare. *Favorite*

 

I don't like the name "card combat" either..or any references to cards (deck, discard, etc). I think the devs should definitely try to tie card combat into the story and explain why our skills are appearing and disappearing randomly. Maybe the same force that makes avatars immortal is also scrambling our trained skills around in our head? Maybe the Lord of Chaos, Darkstarr, has made combat more difficult for avatars for his own secret reasons? Which made me think that "Chaotic Combat" or "Combat Chaos" would be interesting alternatives to card combat.

 

It's not quite a card system, though. It's a collated system. Calling it a card system or deck based combat isn't wrong, but these labels carry implications that the currently implemented system totally fails to realize. That's not a bad thing. "Features" like a discard pile and an actual limited amount of cards in your deck (in other words if you have twenty cards in your deck, the deck doesn't get "redealt" when it runs out) would no doubt be unwelcome in an implementation like this. But when people who haven't experienced the system see labels like "cards" and "decks", they immediately form expectations which may not work to the favor of the game's rapport with those people.

Why does it need a semantic name at all? If you must name it, call it something abstract like "Broken Moon Combat", then describe it. The name is only good for anything anyway if people need to reference the rule set, and there is absolutely no reason it needs to be self-descriptive (at the expense of creating bad expectations for potential customers).

 

Card system is the most simple description I can think of to describe the interface. Tarting up the description only serves to obscure things, making it harder to understand. Card System provides a description people can intuitively and easily understand.

Collated Sigil System?

What the heck is that?

 

I can't say I am a huge fan of the phrases "card based combat" or "card system" either. I just think the term "cards" leads people to think of things like Poker and BlackJack, not combat. Something simple referring to glyphs would be better I think. Glyph based combat (GBC) or something along those lines. No need to get too detailed with it.

 

I'm not really "desparate" to have it changed, but we're not exactly sitting down to play a turned-based card game like MTG either, so the knee jerk reaction to the term card combat doesn't really do the current implementation any justice as a real-time active combat system.

 

I just shot my pop out of my nose with that acronym.
My coworkers are now wondering why I'm laughing hysterically.

 

But why the heck is the player playing a card game while our avatar fights for his life? It turns combat into a minigame. That's why I think they should get away from all the card references and instead try to tie the system into the story. If they used story-consistent terms..it would make combat much more immersive.

 

Richard wants us to call them runes, not cards. He wants to get away from using that term.

 

You have a deck of cards. The cards are dealt at random to your hand. You select and play a card to perform a specific action.

It is a very intuitive description.

 

No argument there. It's an intuitive description. Not an immersive one though.

 

A description is meant to do just that. Describe. If your description obscures what is going on, and inhibits understanding, that is a bad thing.

 

For something to be intuitive, you have to have some idea of how it works before you research or experience it. Do you remember how much fuss there was over what card combat even means before R8? That was like a month ago.

The problem isn't with how the term relates to people who are playing or have played the game. It's with the impression the term leaves with people who are hesitant to buy the game in the first place because they have some unappealing misconceptions or uncertainties about what "card combat" means. The term is ambiguous until you have a frame of reference, and Portalarium would be better served by replacing it with an unfamiliar trademark. This would allow them to brand the system and eliminate some misconceptions for potential customers in one swift blow.

 

Try thinking of a 'deck' as a bag of tricks (or bag of tiles). Your skills are represented as glyphs (or icons or runes). When you select a set of skills for your bag of tricks, picture the glyphs on tiles and you placing them into the bag. You have a currently selected bag of tricks for combat and you can actually have many more bags with different skills ready to switch.

You draw one tile at a time and it's ready to be used or discarded. Eventually you refill your bag and repeat as needed.

Conceptually the same but you don't have to use the terms 'card' or 'deck'.

Note that this is just to visualize the system. Players in game won't be walking around with bags and pulling little tiles out. They will be swinging swords and casting spells and trying not to get hit.

 

Word descriptions are problematic. A picture is worth a thousand words. How much is video worth? Chris's video on the card system cleared things up for me entirely. The phrase 'card system' became very obvious and intuitive indeed. It allowed me to visualize exactly what was going on, and how things worked in terms of cards being placed into a deck, dealt into a hand, and played to select an action.

Once people start playing, I suspect Card System will enter common usage. What you are describing is marketing. What I'm describing is how people actually think.

 

This is exactly what I was touching on in my last post. Card based combat, what the heck is that? For someone who hasn't tried it, it sounds like SotA's version of Solitaire or Go Fish or something. I think it gives the wrong impression and in fact, is not very intuitive of a reference.

Something along the lines of "glyph" or "runes" sounds far more interesting and would lead the inexperienced SotA prospect to look into it further. It also sounds more RPG and less Poker.