New card creation

Question

This is not about moddability. That is being discussed in another post.

Suppose we have our "vanilla" mod working. Users (players) may be perfectly happy with the available cards, and that will likely be the case with the majority of users. But one may get an idea for a card that may be desirable and request that it be added. 

First off, I think the GUI should reflect the fact that this is something users request from mods, rather than just have a free reign. Different modders may do it differently, of course. 

Consider this:

Start a game

My cards

Create a new card

Exit

Versus:

Start a game

My cards

Request a new card

Exit

That way it is (hopefully) instinctual to the user that this is not a "free creation" mode but rather a request to make a new card available to the user base. 

Now, here are the steps I think would be reasonable to include in the new card request approval:

1) DB Admin checks to make sure the requested card is not a duplicate of a card which already exists.

2) Game logic admins check to make sure the new card doesn't create an exploit or anything like that.

3) Algorithm admins check to make sure implementation is possible.

4) Theme admins check to make sure the card name, description, etc. works within the mod theme, and that graphics can be supplied or created for the card.

5) After approvals are supplied, the card is created, and most importantly, posted to the whole user base as being a new card available for purchase/trading. Importantly, the requestor would also have to buy/trade the card, it would not be given to the user for free just for requesting it. 

Thoughts?

 

EDIT: I meant to mention this would most likely be done on the DB side, with the new card request being held in a table set up for this, and inserted into the main card library upon approval. That way we can keep track of approved and denied requests. 

Answer 1

The second idea I am suggesting is the idea that Simon originally suggeted, and I believe the reason that he wanted to start this project in the first place.  What this would be is a Stack Exchange type of upvoting and downvoting new cards created by the userbase.

We would create a list of possible abilities and implement them in code, as well as an initial list of cards that we create and balance ourselves.  Then either in the game itself or on a supporting forum, we allow users to create new cards by mixing the abilities on the cards together and tweaking the attack and health stats of the card.  Our algorithm would still decide the casting cost based on how they put the card together.  Then they submit the card to the game/forum, and other users are allowed to upvote and downvote the card.  

Popular cards or cards with a certain number of upvotes could then be implemented by us into the game itself.  We could allow the users to gain reputation based on positive attention to their submitted cards, or possibly even the feedback they provide on the cards of other users.  We could require a certain number of reputation be gained before cards may be submitted, or we could allow those with enough reputation to mark a card for submission to us, and into the game.  We could also allow them to close and remove imbalanced cards.

We could go one step further and make sure that any card created in this way could immediately be implemented into the game itself, so we would already have all possible combinations in code before users start creating cards.  Then if cards get enough votes or get approved by the high reputation users, they could be added to the game without our direct interaction.  I think that anything that reduces the amount of work we have to do is a very good thing.

Comments

This is my favorite idea so far. Would be fairly simple to implement into DB, just a user_vote type of table with user_id, card_id, a value of 1 or -1 or 0 (cancelled vote)

Answer 2

The primary idea I am suggesting is that we make the card creation mechanic part of the gameplay of the game itself.  As far as I know this has never been done, and if implemented properly I think it could be a really fun and unique gameplay experience.

The way this would work is that rather than creating all of the specific cards, instead we create a (hopefully lengthy) list of abilities and effects.  An extension of this is that instead of unlocking cards, the players would unlock these abilities.  They create their decks by putting the special abilities onto the base cards, possibly also increasing or decreasing their health and attack stats also.  Then our algorithm will decide what the cost to play the card would be as it is configured.  The algorithm would need to take into account the possible combinations of cards that would be imbalanced.  We would discover what those are through testing and eventually user feedback.

There are many advantages to this approach.  It will be easier to balance, because we will have created and tested all the content ahead of time.  It is less work for us going forward, because we will not have to review card suggestions and implement them ourselves.  We could expand the game by adding new abilities, which would not require the additional art and sound assets that a full card would. Finally, as far as I know the idea has never been done before.  As to whether or not this would actually be fun, we would probably need to build a prototype to find out.