Tiers

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Erundil
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Joined:Fri Jan 21, 2011 23:36
Tiers

Post by Erundil » Mon Jul 08, 2013 00:58

Yes, the cost is arguable. However I'd like it to keep to 3 until deck/playtest occurs, as anyway we don't have many powerful cards. I''ll open a topic soon on the matter.
As promised to snowdrop, I'll write a bit on sets development, which is by my way quite obvious, but then having played exstensively MtG not everyone might get it.

Commercial CCGs have both weak and strong cards in the same set. Stronger cards become overpriced and their value pushes players to buy more cards, in the hope of getting them whilst they get the weak ones mostly. This effectively forces players to reduce the number of strong cards the play in favour of the weaker ones.
Here, we do not have such matter.

However these stronger cards also give flavour to the set and rule out which deck types are played and which ones are not. We need to give flavour to the sets too.
Going deeper, they limit the viable choices of competitive decks by pointing at their weak spots. If, for example, is quite easy for opponents to wipe out the grave, relying on it will become more rischious. Or if opponents can drop a 10/10 on the second turn, playing a slow deck will be more rischious.

What is to take into account, however is not the entire card pool, but the cards that are actually played, eg:
An opponent could make a 10/10 on the second turn deck, and I would lose to it with a slow deck. That is highly unlikely because that deck loses to other deck types which can counter the 10/10. My slow deck is not that bad against these decks, so playing it is a viable choice.
Taking it to the next level, there are also cards that stay in between: neither strong or weak, often with subtle abilities that are not always useful. This cards however constitute an important part of the game because they will be quite variable from deck to deck.

We can name the stronger cards Tier 1, the middle ones Tier 2 and the weakest Tier 3. Not to be confused with rarity: the tiers can change quite drastically with a couple of newer cards.

Being mostly acknowledged from internet and having cards printable at will makes things quite different for us: t3 cards will be despised and t1 even more overrated.

It will take extra care to balance a set, and sets between them.
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snowdrop
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Re: Tiers

Post by snowdrop » Wed Jul 10, 2013 00:58

I'm not sure I understood the point, but from what I can figure it's for us to start using a kind of developers categorization of cards into tiers 1 to 3, where 1 is weakest and 3 strongest.

1. What would such a categorization be used for?
2. How is the strenght of a card measured for determining in what tier to place it?

The only and primary measurement of a total cards "strength" will be each cards goldcost. That in itself tells us how huge effect the card could have in normal or perhaps even optimal circumstances. The gold cost is printed on the card and we get back to the first question again.

I agree with you that certain cards will have more important roles than other cards in a deck. That in itself does't turn a card into a tier x card or somehow "improve" that cards strength: It just happens to make the card central for playing the deck the way you built it.
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Q_x
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Re: Tiers

Post by Q_x » Wed Jul 10, 2013 06:11

I assumed it's a loyalty assignment :D
I'm the filthy bastard you wish you never met.
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