It took me 30 seconds to stop to think for a moment about how deck combat might work.

OK...Just read through the slightly rabid post on deck combat and rather than adding something at the bottom of that thread I thought I'd just start a new contentious thread because I'm a sucker for attention and can't live without the validation by my peers.

So without further ado...deck combat:

So here's a way it might work:

You start off with a basic set of skill cards, every time you have a skill increase certain skill cards either become available to you or can be found/learned as you travel around the world. As your character spends a longer and longer time in SotA they develop a larger and larger deck. Now..here's the rub, all characters only have so many mental ergs hence they can only memorize a certain number of skills (cards) - 1st edition AD&D magic anyone? Which cards they decide to use is up to them but their "deck" selection fundamentally impacts the way they fight/spell cast. The larger your deck the greater your choice.

Once "slotted" cards behave just like skills in any other MMO, they can be activated by clicking on the panel (or using a hotkey) to perform the skill. Any slotted skill/card gains in power and effectiveness as it's used...in other words your skill cards become the way that your character advances.

Pros:

- This leads to a very variable skills/cards system allowing just about everyone a huge amount of flexibility regarding how they build their character.
- Building decks drives exploration and character interaction as everyone tries to find that one mentor that can teach them the skill/card to beat all skills.
- You could allow guilds to teach certain skills they've learned as guild skills to members leading to more meaningful guild interactions.
- Personal skill/card training delivers a rather nice "Mentor" mechanic. I always liked the old Kinships in Asheron's Call that had this concept of Mentoring in the Liege lord (although this worked in rather a different way).
- It appeals to the collector in all of us.
- Having skill progression built into your cards eliminates the need for complex skill trees

Cons:
- Complexity - if not implemented carefully it can lead to a level of complexity that can make it difficult for newbies to get into the game
- Balancing - it might be very difficult to balance a system where you have a thousand cards...a lot of opportunity for a "Golden Bullet" making the system temporarily imbalanced

*******
- Revenue abuse - This is for me the single biggest danger of a card based skill system. Portalarium may have seen the huge success of games like Rage of Bahamut and Marvel hereos on mobile platforms and be thinking to themselves - "Hey! Can you spell incremental revenue or wot!!". In other words they might have considered card collecting driving a revenue dynamic. Hell, I would have if I'd been designing the game in their place. Now I don't mind the idea of you giving yourself a hand up, i.e. shortening your development cycle by buying the odd card pack (see Star Trek Online or even LoTRO or WoT) but you should be able to build a deck at least as good if not better by finding cards as by buying card packs otherwise this game just becomes Pay-to-win and I think that would destroy much of the atmosphere that the team at Portalarium are trying so hard to achieve. Having said that Lord British and the team are no fools or new comers to this stage so I expect they've already thought through this and will add the card dynamics in a sensible fashion.
******

Have fun selecting your skill deck everyone!!

Darius Falc.

 

Thanks for the insitefull exsplination on decks. I tried to read a few threads on Deck combat system but they just seem to be filled with people just as confused as I. If this is how they system will work then I am happy with that and I cant wait to see it in action. But you know the real question is, how big is your deck Mr. Falc?

 

See, I don't have a huge issue if it were a sidegame or something that was used as a character modifier (basically, like the Glyph system in WoW), but I am really leery at the moment of what it may entail.

I could see Crafting making use of something like it, especially if you had certain cards available, your finished product would have additional stats/abilities/durability/etc. I think the biggest contention at the moment is when people hear the word "deck", they do automatically assume a TCG style game ala Magic: The Gathering. I don't mind collecting stuff in game, but that would be a hell of a cashgrab to introduce atop everything else, if the "best" ones were intended for the shop.

Dunno. Hopefully it's a perk thing for the game, as opposed to a Hearthstone-type knockoff gameplay.

 

I'm sorry to disappoint you Grace but I have a tiny deck. That's why I spend so much time here...I'm compensating.

DF.

 

Only 3 posts from FP to get to penis jokes.

I think we'll get along fine Pros....

 

** Points upwards emphatically ** She started it! She started it!

DF.

 

I am excited about the deck combat scheme; I also trust that the Dev Team is and will continue to make good course corrections as things move forward.

 

tattle tail!

 

insightful explanation.

 

I'm hoping for a huge amount of flexibility and variations of combat builds in SoTA. So far it looks good in that sense.
But hey OP, good ideas.

 

I'm amazed it was so long, and hard to get at. Next time, maybe there can be a better grasp on the handle, so we can properly bring matters to climax.

What?!

 

I think I'm beginning to agree with people in the industry like Jeff Minter who argue that these new business model tactics like Free 2 Play, Pay to Win and in App purchases have driven the fun from games in a kind of absurd "race to the bottom".

I really hope the card system isn't intended as yet another in game revenue generator. There is a point at which I'm really not interested in Pay 2 Win new fangled antics.

I wish we would just get games the old fashioned way. Solid, good and no constant fixation on bleeding the player dry.

 

I think there may be some innuendo here but I'm having a hard time finding it....so to speak.

DF.

 

Nice analysis.

Consider the UO magic system as a deck of cards. 64 cards, but how many were typically used in PvP?

Poison, paralyze, energy bolt, fireball, lightning bolt, mostly.

As the OP points out, I think the card deck is just a conceptual device to help players conceptualize their choices and options.

 

I think the main thrust of your attack is to prick holes in the stiff front erected by Portalarium. (thank you Dan Aykroyd)

I like that it's not turn based, but rather the cards are additions to the continuing battle that's going on. Kind of like reserve troops that you send in when the moment is right!

 

The only part I'm not too sure about is the constant changing of the "cards" and appearing in random positions. That is really my main concern.

I don't even know how much of a concern it is until I try it out...... Bring on March so I can get a feel for it.

 

The way i understand it and PLEASE correct me if i am wrong. When i start the game fresh and new i will have the basic cards A, B, and C. I only have 3 slots on my hot bar and i decide to stick each card into the slots. Each card represents a particular combat skill/move/boost. Now I can do OK at first with cards A, B, and C. But after doing a nice long quest chain i got a reward of a new card D!! now i like card D better then card A so i can keep card A at my house or something and just replace card A with card D.

I think i understand that there will be different ways to get cards and i can mix and match them however i see fit. Is this basically the system? What about the random card thing, what is that?

 

Agreed. I don't mind the random selection of the skills/cards to populate the bar, however the random switching in the midst of combat is going to be annoying, especially if you're just that 1/10th of a second slow (or your connection is) and THOUGHT you hit a certain skill only for it to have changed to something else.

Based on what I saw in the demo video, I would limit the "deck bar" to three or four slots (keys 1, 2, 3, and 4) and have the slots initiallize in a random card selection that is constant until one of the slots is used, then the used slot randomly chooses the replacement "card" and so forth.

However, we''ll have to see what the system is like in actual use to really see how it will flow.

 

Basically you create a deck of say 100 cards. Within the deck you might have 10 unique abilities.....one of those could be a healing spell. Depending on how you wish to play you would 'weight' your deck accordingly...so maybe 40 of the 100 would be heal spells.

During combat the cards get dealt randomly into your skill bar. Say you had 10 slots, you might be dealt 4 heal, 2 lightning, 3 fireball and 1 paralyze. These stay in place for maybe 20 seconds and then they get re-dealt.

You can't 'bind' specific abilities to keys because they can appear in a different order.

This is the main part I really don't like (not knowing what key my spell is on)..... I'm not overly keen on the random deals either.

Really hard to say what it will be like so I'm just going to wait and see.

 

Mmm that thread name reminds me of another... Not nice Mr Darius, not nice...