Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Anything related to dev. & that doesn't fit in below categories.
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34
Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by ngoeminne » Sat Nov 17, 2018 13:15

Hey Folks,

Now we've got the core set out, should we start thinking about an expansion set an other future actions?

I'd value your input on the following items:

1. What would be a good name for the expansion set?
2. Should we focus on the Enchantment/Development idea (from Desttinghim)
3. Should we create new pre-constructed decks,
4. Or add complementary cards (extra mill, extra discard, more orcs, more soldiers, more nature/elves)
5. Are there any suggestions for new deck-themes (we've got some merfolk artwork)
6. Where should Santi work on next (artwork)
7. Should we support translations for the current set?
8. Should we boost our online/social media presence?


Kind regards,
Nico
Desttinghim
Posts:45
Joined:Sun Nov 13, 2016 08:36
Location:Utah

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by Desttinghim » Sat Nov 17, 2018 15:36

1. What would be a good name for the expansion set?
2. Should we focus on the Enchantment/Development idea (from Desttinghim)
3. Should we create new pre-constructed decks,
4. Or add complementary cards (extra mill, extra discard, more orcs, more soldiers, more nature/elves)
5. Are there any suggestions for new deck-themes (we've got some merfolk artwork)
6. Where should Santi work on next (artwork)
7. Should we support translations for the current set?
8. Should we boost our online/social media presence?

1. I think we should hold off on names until we have a better idea of what we want to include.
2. I suppose I should get started on that '^_^ A focus on allowing different play-styles with the minimum number of new cards might be good. Each color has about one play-style (and just enough cards for a single deck) at the moment, which limits how creative people can get with new decks.
3-4. I think we have enough pre-constructed decks at the moment. Supplementary cards to allow people to design their own unique decks would be better, in my opinion.
5. Not from me, no
6. I don't have an idea for this one
7. This will be up to others, as I speak only one language. It sounds like we have plenty of players in countries where English is not the dominant language, so this might be a good idea.
8. Yes! Though, uh... I'm no good at this. We should find someone who is at least on the popular social media channels to do this.

My thought is that we should focus on providing more ways to build decks, and add cards to support play-styles. If one card can support mutliple play-styles, even better.We should determine what play-styles we want in each color (some of these may overlap), and design cards to fit into these.
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by ngoeminne » Mon Nov 19, 2018 20:16

Here are some idea's

The name of the expansion could be "Development"

That would cover some multiple meanings:
- we're developing the game further
- we're advancing the gameplay
- we can focus on the following new keyword for enchantments

"Development - Target city gains the following levels:"

Here are a few card ideas

Fountain of Youth - Enchantment - Gaian - Cost 2 - Loyalty 1
Development - Target city gains the following levels:
Level 0: This city gain 1 defense point
Level 3 : This city gain 1 defense point when attacked
Level 6: All your cities gain 1 defense point

Sandman - Enchantment - Dark Legion - Cost 3 - Loyalty 2
Development - Target city gains the following levels:
Level 3 : All of this city's residents get 1 damage at the end of your turn.

Tranquil Halls - Enchantment - Gaian - Cost X - Loyalty 1
Development - Target city gains the following levels:
Level X : Cancel all of this city other abilities of level X.

Moon Gate - Enchantment - House of Nobles - Cost 3 - Loyalty 2
Development - Target city gains the following levels:
Level 2: The number of movements allowed for this city is increased by one.

Swampy Moat - Enchantment - Dark Legion - Cost 3 - Loyalty 1
Development - Target city gains the following levels:
Level 2: Creatures attacking this city get -1/0.
Level 4: Creatures attacking this city get -1/-1.

The Orc Pit - Enchantment - Red Banner - Cost 2 - Loyalty 2
Level 4: Target creature from opposing army battles one of this cities residents (Opponent choose the resident that battles).

Furthermore, in the expansion set I'd like 5 new cities, one for each faction, some more events, some more magic spells and some more enchantments and just a couple of new creatures (maybe in the merfolk theme)

Feel free to give feedback!
Kind regards,
Nico
Desttinghim
Posts:45
Joined:Sun Nov 13, 2016 08:36
Location:Utah

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by Desttinghim » Tue Nov 20, 2018 14:45

I would scale back on the levels on development cards. One, possibly two per development card. Okay, looking closer, that is what you are doing on most. I think development is more of a subtype of enchantment (or even a new card type) than a keyword. We could still use the enchantment template for cards. The main difference that the target is a city, instead of a creature. This is an important difference I think. I like your ideas here, but they could use some refining.

Fountain of Youth - The idea of regaining defense points, is good. I think a single level of 2 or so that adds 1 or 2 defense points would be simpler and more useful. Something like this:

Code: Select all

Fountain of Youth - Development - Gaian - Cost 2 - Loyalty 1
Developed city gains the following level:
Level 1: This city gains 1 defense point.
Sandman - Name suggests a creature. Lair of the Sandman, Curse of the Sandman, or something like that might work better. The mechanic would work better at a lower level and is clearer like this:

Code: Select all

Sandman - Development - Dark Legion - Cost 3 - Loyalty 2
Developed city gains the following levels:
Level 1: All residents of this city take 1 damage at the end of turn.
Of course, damage is reset at the end of turn so this would only work to take out creatures with 1 defense.

Tranquil Halls - better phrasing:

Code: Select all

Tranquil Halls - Development - Gaian - Cost X - Loyalty 1
Tactics of level X on enchanted city are prevented.
Moon Gate - Hmm. I don't know if I want this card to use levels or just be a permanent ability like so:

Code: Select all

Moon Gate - Development - House of Nobles - Cost 3 - Loyalty 2
Developed city is allowed 1 more movement per turn.
Swampy Moat - Is the intent for the attack to gain down 2 or 1?

Code: Select all

Swampy Moat - Development - Dark Legion - Cost 3 - Loyalty 1
Developed city gains the following levels:
Level 2: Creatures attacking this city get -1/0.
Level 4: Creatures attacking this city get -1/-1.
The Orc Pit - Hrm. For some reason I don't like the usage of orc in this title. Tried to improve wording.

Code: Select all

The Pit - Development - Red Banner - Cost 2 - Loyalty 2
Level 4: Target creature from opposing army battles a resident of developed city chosen by opponent.
EDIT:

We need at least one development card for The Empire.

Code: Select all

Tower - Development - The Empire Cost 3 - Loyalty 2
Developed city gains following level(s):
Level 2: Deal 1 damage to target creature in opponent army.
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by ngoeminne » Fri Nov 23, 2018 17:26

Hey Louis,
Desttinghim wrote:
Tue Nov 20, 2018 14:45
I would scale back on the levels on development cards.
Agreed.
Desttinghim wrote:
Tue Nov 20, 2018 14:45
I think development is more of a subtype of enchantment (or even a new card type)
A new card type would be best (game wise), but then we'll need to update the rules on when it can be played.
And, cards that target enchantments (e.g. destroy target enchantment, wouldn't work on developement cards)

An other option is to use the city-template itself. Then we could also have a value for the development's strength (e.g. +2). That would increase the city's strength by two permanently.

A single development would then:
1. Strengthen the city
2. Enhance the abilities of the city

Here's an example of 'The Tower'

https://aminduna.arcmage.org/#/cards/ff ... e734583187

Kind regards,
Nico
Zero
Posts:21
Joined:Thu Jan 03, 2019 09:18

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by Zero » Sun Jan 06, 2019 11:37

I'm just a noob here, but in my humble opinion, finishing the background story (the House of Nobles and the Empire) would be a real plus.

Also, translations could bring new players/contributors. I'm pretty sure a lot of french players cannot join the game just because it is english only. I know this is not trivial, but the more we wait the bigger the task.

The game seems to be in a stable, playable state. Maybe it's time to grow horizontally for a while. What do you think?
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by ngoeminne » Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:18

Hey Zero,

Background stories always add to the game-acceptance. We've got some background story :
[url https://arcmage.org/wiki/index.php?title=Story]The story so far[/url]

Zero wrote:
Sun Jan 06, 2019 11:37
Also, translations could bring new players/contributors. I'm pretty sure a lot of french players cannot join the game just because it is english only. I know this is not trivial, but the more we wait the bigger the task.
I agree, and I got the feeling that you'd be willing to take the lead for the french translations. There a couple of other french speaking people that are/were involved. Maybe I could contact them again, so that we could split the effort.
Zero wrote:
Sun Jan 06, 2019 11:37
The game seems to be in a stable, playable state. Maybe it's time to grow horizontally for a while. What do you think?
It is stable, playable, but still very limited in the sense of custom deck building. I believe we should also continue with creating a new series, with some new decks and maybe a set of loose cards that are useful elsewhere.

In the end, I think we should keep development of new card until we have a card set of about 300-400 unique cards. That would allow for a lot of variation. Currently we have 85 unique cards released.


Kind regards,
Nico
Zero
Posts:21
Joined:Thu Jan 03, 2019 09:18

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by Zero » Wed Jan 09, 2019 20:01

I agree, and I got the feeling that you'd be willing to take the lead for the french translations. There a couple of other french speaking people that are/were involved. Maybe I could contact them again, so that we could split the effort.
I wouldn't say "take the lead", but yeah, I'm here! Ok, contacting them would be nice indeed. We need backup!
In the end, I think we should keep development of new card until we have a card set of about 300-400 unique cards. That would allow for a lot of variation. Currently we have 85 unique cards released.
It's easier to translate 85 cards and make new ones later (translating them on our way), than making 400 cards in english and translate them all at once!!

Is Snowdrop still around?

Who are the founders? Where are they?
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by ngoeminne » Thu Jan 10, 2019 14:03

Hey Zero,

I agree that we shouldn't wait for the 400 cards before translation starts :-)
We can do both, start translating and also keep expanding the core set.
ngoeminne wrote:
Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:18
Is Snowdrop still around?

Who are the founders? Where are they?
Yep, snowdrop is still around. The other members of the original wtactics team are in a winter sleep.

At the time I joined the wtactics project in januari 2016. The project was nearly dead, all devs had abandoned it, the resources were everywhere (artwork was here and there on ftp, wiki, github, bazar, dropbox) and the infrastructure was infested with worms (the forum, wiki, website). The old card database was gone, and the cardscape and sandscape were borken. It didn't look good at all.

I decided to contact snowdrop and see if we could revive it some how. I went trough all the forum posts and tried to do a post-mortem analysis on why things were so bad. Basically I concluded it was mainly due to lack of setting small achievable goals and a focus on a stable ruleset and playable decks.

Then I took the liberty to distill a ruleset (Awesome Rules Concept) from all the ideas and made it stable. At the same time I started to gather the artwork back in one place (github). And made contact with some of the previous devs, snowdrop,Mat, Ravenchild, Xarn,Q_X and they were willing to help out in giving me access and as much as temp/working files they could, but also indicated they didn't want to take up a major role any longer. After that they went silent (except for snowdrop).

Next thing was to setup the infrastructure again, we cleaned the wiki, forum, and wtatics website.

I found that during the wtatcis days, a lot (to much) of effort went in discussions about templating, coloring, typography, print quality, etc... instead of getting play test decks ready, so we set up a small goal: creating two decks that can compete. Meanwhile new people were slowly coming back to the project: Peter, Clemens, Louis, Pistos to name a few.

So our next goal was creating two playable decks. I soon realized that creating cards by hand was impossible to do with the limited number of people willing to help. Copy-past and design each card in inkscape or scribus or whatever wouldn't work. And it is hard to keep in sync, and let other people work on things that were already there. So I made a card generation tool and integrated that with an online database (aminduna).

We started to use the huge artwork collection, and Santi went back in created missing artwork for the two decks.

By the end of 2016 we had done it : a stable ARC rule set and two decks: "Gaian love for life" and "Uneasy Alliance". At that time I wanted to (pre-)release it, and I discussed that with snowdrop (the orignal founder of wtactis). He felt that it could not be released under the wtactics name, as it wasn't the Original Rule Concept he started (but not finished by then - it is now), while I felt it was a must, it was the first time the project could deliver something in 7 years, and a huge milestone and a very important mindset: we can deliver, the project hasn't failed.

As snowdrop wanted to hold on to the ORC rules, we agreed that we'd transform wtaticts into a place for cooperation about ideas, discussions and shared resources, while still giving the freedom for each team ARC/ORC to go ahead on their own space and time. So we created gaia.li (orc ruleset) and arcmage.org (ARC ruleset).

So the arcmage team progressed and in 2017 we worked out small issues with the rules, the release candidate cards, and made a simple online web browser based game to play-test. We also started with creating new decks for the other factions: Peter had some ideas about an empire deck, Clemens started the toll of time deck, Louis created his Uprising Deck and I worked on the Shadow deck.

In 2018 Alex joined us and done something amazing: sold his magic collection to fund artwork. So now snowdrop Ales and me are funding the artwork (thanks to snowdrop we already had a large collection, but now we could extend it with the missing artwork for arcmage as well).

By august 2018 we had the six decks ready, had designed a box, started on a rules leaflet, and Pistos and Marieke edited and re-edited and reviewed and reviewed the cards until they were ready to pint.

November 2018 saw the first release of arcmage with the six decks in a real (hand crafted box). We ordered 20 copies, and there is only one in stock. The release led to a small player-base in Belgium (besides my play test buddies). And our numbers are slowly increasing on our discord channel.

We owe much to the original developers of wtatics and in particular to snowdrop, Q_x, Mattiah, xarn and Ravenchild and we thank them for all their effort.

I did reach try to reach out them (by mail) but didn't got any replies. It could be that they didn't find the forum after it was moved to arcmage.org and that we changed IRC for discord, or that they left when the old wtaticts site went down. (It was really beyond repair). In any case I credited them as correctly as possible. https://arcmage.org/credits

That's the story, so far,
Kind regards,
Nico
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snowdrop
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Re: Expansion set and future actions. Input wanted

Post by snowdrop » Mon Jan 28, 2019 06:54

+1. Good summary by NG.
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