On Game Design

[-Griffin]

[u][b]Disclaimer[/b][/u]
This topic is not about enjoying making cards, it is about making cards to be enjoyed. If you are not interested in design or actually dueling with cards you create, this topic is probably not worth your time.

[u][b]Introduction[/b][/u]
So a while back I posted [url="http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/231964-on-card-design/"]"On Card Design"[/url]. It was generally well-received and got a sticky. Still has one two years later. I've got some more things to add, and would like to use this topic for some discussion, but I generally agree with everything I said back then, so do read that topic too.

This time I'm going to cover some broader concepts and see if they can be applied to design of cards in the current format at all.

[u][b]Randomness[/b][/u]
How random should a game be? To answer that, what does randomness give to a game? Often, it closes a skill gap. Let me illustrate with an example. In a zero-randomness game where everything is known ([acronym='I am not saying Chess is bad in any way, players are often a slightly random aspect automatically, which helps.']Chess[/acronym]), a better player wins the vast majority of the time. In the game of coin-flip, "heads I win, tails you win." There is no skill. Does that make randomness an evil thing that makes skill meaningless? Not if it's done right. Which of these games sound most fun:[list=1]
[*]The better player always wins. If you know they're even slightly better than you, there's no point playing against them.

[*]The better player is more likely to win. A pro can consistently beat a first-time player because of the skillgap, but almost-equal players have an almost-equal chance to win, and even when the opponent is a fair bit better, there's a good spark of hope.

[*]Any first time player can beat any pro with a good chance - there isn't much to be gained by skill or practice, you just have to play and hope.
[/list]
Personally, I feel #2 sounds most fun. You want a chance, but you want to feel the games mean something and that you improve as you play more. Games are fun when you feel you out-played your opponent, but that the game wasn't pre-decided either. Translating this to Yugioh, drawing is usually random enough to reach #2, so the lesson to take away is not to make things too much more random. Inconsistent Decks, dice/coin based cards with dramatic effects, or total game-changers that can't be consistently searched, all present this risk. They're still passable if they have other good design principles, but do think about if you're making the game into coin-flip.

[u][b]Options/Card Entropy[/b][/u]
Imagine a situation. Two players are in a game, maybe around turn 3, Decks have been made about equally well, it's Player A's turn and we want to judge how skilled Player A is. What differs a skilled player from an unskilled one. Deck Design? - Well, that would make duels rather pointless, we'd just feed them into the latest DS game and let the computer decide. The answer is choices. A skilled player, when having multiple options, picks the right one. In games that aren't turn-based, mechanical aspects might come into it, but in Yugioh, we only have choices. And we like skill to be important! That's what lets you 'out-play' your opponent and lets us avoid playing that stupid game of coin-flip. So, we clearly need to give a player enough options to show their skill. What options can you make in a Yugioh game? Which cards to activate or in which order, which synchros/xyz to make with your materials, what to target with your cards, when to attack and what to attack. That seems like there would usually be plenty of choices, but consider the situation where lots of card removal has been played - you have nothing to activate in the Graveyard and your hand/field has a total of 2 cards, which you can't synchro/xyz with for some reason. How many options do you have that aren't stupid? Probably not many. The vast majority of players would make the same choices, you aren't showing any skill. Now you have a total of ten cards available and there are eight targets on your opponent's side of the field. There's probably at least five almost equally viable ways to play the hand - which one you choose is using your skill. More cards on both sides of the field usually leads to more options and more chances to prove your skill. I'm going to refer to the number of cards usable from the grave/deck, cards in your hand/field, cards in the extra Deck that have a chance to come into play, ect, as 'card entropy' a high card entropy is usually good for the game. But when can it be bad? Unfortunately for Yugioh, OTKs and Exodia mean a high card entropy can destroy player-player interaction and end the duel far too quickly if they aren't designed carefully.

How to use this carefully to better our card design then? Well, always pay attention to if your cards are increasing or decreasing card entropy. 1-4-1 destruction/negation/removal like D-Prison, Solemn, Bottomless, MST, strictly decrease card entropy (by 2 cards generally). Try and avoid things like this. We're designing two archtypes, the Happy Bunnies and their enemies, the Belligerent Badgers. Which of them has the better designed card?

|Rampaging Badgerz|
|Normal Spell|
|Activate only while you control a "Belligerent Badger" monster. Discard 1 card to send 2 cards on the field to the Graveyard.|

|Bunny Funtime|
|Normal Spell|
|Activate only whlie you control a "Happy Bunny" monster. Your opponent draws 1 card. During your End Phase, draw 2 cards.|

The Badgers really pull down the card entropy with that card, a -4 to the options! Bunnies are much nicer on the other hand, one card turns into three! A +2 to the options available, that's a card that promotes some skill! Try and leave removal to your big monsters or situational cards, and if possible, compensate the card entropy somehow, like giving your opponent a draw for each card destroyed. Even a token is better than nothing. Card removal of course, happens, but it doesn't have to be badly designed.

[u][b]Comebacks[/b][/u]
Player A is having a bad game. 3000 LP left, a set card and 2 in his hand to synchro, xyz, three backrows, two hand cards and 6500 Life Points of his opponent. Is the game over? Considering the three backrows can probably negate anything Player A tries to do with the current card pool, yes, the game is over almost every time. Should it be? Hell no! The anime doesn't put the hero behind before he wins in most of his duels out of habit. It's because comebacks are fun - when you can make a comeback, there are less Lame Duck situations. There's always a reason to keep playing. It's the opposite of slippery slope. But how do we encourage comebacks? For one, a high Card Entropy but few 1-4-1 removals are good, especially removal that can ruin a Normal Summon (Solemns, Bottomless) - when you have a high card entropy, you can combine cards in various ways - discard 1 to activate 1 then use the first one's effect from the Graveyard to summon an entirely new one from your hand and combine them to make [acronym='which is only a slightly more sensible name that Interplanetarypurplythorny Dragon'] Super-Awesome Kickass Monster[/acronym], for example. If you draw Silly Spellcard as the only card on your hand or field, and still Summon Super-Awesome Kickass Monster without activating anything in the Graveyard, then Silly Spellcard is either extremely situational, or possibly overpowered enough that it adds too much luck (who draws it), especially with how hard searching spell cards can be. Generally, think about what situations a card is most likely to trigger in, and where it will have the biggest impact, and if this is good or bad for comebacks. Let's flesh out those archtypes a bit more!

|Badger Dig a Trap Hole|
|Counter Trap|
|Shuffle a "Belligerent Badger" monster in your Graveyard into your Deck to negate the Normal Summon of an opponent's monster and shuffle it into their Deck.|

|Bunny Helps People|
|Trap Card|
|Activate when a "Happy Bunny" monster on your side of the field is destroyed as a result of an opponent's attack. Return that monster and 1 monster your opponent controls to the owner's hand, then add 1 monster from your Graveyard to your hand and end the Battle Phase.|

Well, the Badger's card is going to have the most impact when your opponent needed that monster to hold on for another turn, or to start a combo that would put them back in the game, generally when they have no/few other monsters and no/few other ways to Summon monsters. That really works against comebacks, pretty bad design. I am disappointed, Badgers! Bunnies, on the other hand, are doing a great job again. The card implies that your opponent is confident enough to attack, so is probably not super-far behind, doesn't restrict your opponent's options, has a wide number of targets (any monster in your Graveyard), and generally seems much better design, good job Happy Bunnies!

[u][b]"Balance" in terms of card design[/b][/u]
Balance and design values are not the same thing, and sometimes might stand against each other. Underpowered cards are always bad design - they add more noise you have to learn to filter to make good Decks and increase clutter when searching through cards. Overpowered cards are more complicated. If there are enough overpowered generic cards that all Decks feel too similar, that's bad, but if an overpowered card fits good design principles, like encouraging high card entropy, player-player interaction, and comebacks, then it might be justified. Monster Reborn is a great example of this. It is certainly a very powerful card, but it has a greatest impact when you need a strong monster to hold on and don't have many ways to populate your field. I've seen it included in quite a few comebacks for sure, and it sets off many combos to increase card entropy. Pot of Greed is more debatable. It increases card entropy and is generally most useful when you're a bit behind, but it can simply make a format too fast and there isn't much skill to using it - you usually instantly activate it if you're lucky enough to draw it. If Exodia and other lockdowns and OTKs were removed from the format, I think PoG might quite happily sit on the limited list, albeit not perfectly designed with the luck it adds. A specific Deck (e.g. Cloudians or something) being overpowered, however, can make other Decks feel weak and make competitive players feel like they don't have much choice in Deck design. That's bad. Some overpowered cards can be justified by design, but not too many, and not too Deck-specific..

[u][b]Outro[/b][/u]
Hopefully this helps any of you planning to make cards for dueling purposes design cards which create a fun, skill-based environment for all players. If you have any points you're interested in or want to discuss, please post below!

[-Griffin]

To provoke discussion:

Debate what the best starting Life Points would be for the game given the current cardpool.

Personally, I feel 15000 would be a good region. Far less OTKs, but able to be taken down quick enough that the game isn't simple who totally controls the field.

[newhat]

[quote name='-Griffin' timestamp='1344531734' post='6002034']
|Badger Dig a Trap Hole|
|Counter Trap|
|Shuffle a "Belligerent Badger" monster in your Graveyard into your Deck to negate the Normal Summon of an opponent's monster and shuffle it into their Deck.|

|Bunny Helps People|
|Trap Card|
|Activate when a "Happy Bunny" monster on your side of the field is destroyed as a result of an opponent's attack. Return that monster and 1 monster your opponent controls to the owner's hand, then add 1 monster from your Graveyard to your hand and end the Battle Phase.|

Well, the Badger's card is going to have the most impact when your opponent needed that monster to hold on for another turn, or to start a combo that would put them back in the game, generally when they have no/few other monsters and no/few other ways to Summon monsters. That really works against comebacks, pretty bad design. I am disappointed, Badgers! Bunnies, on the other hand, are doing a great job again. The card implies that your opponent is confident enough to attack, so is probably not super-far behind, doesn't restrict your opponent's options, has a wide number of targets (any monster in your Graveyard), and generally seems much better design, good job Happy Bunnies![/quote]

There's a place for comeback cards as well as winmoar cards. Ideally you'd use the Bunny card to set up a useful play for your next turn, and ideally you'd use the Badger card to dash your opponent's last options and take the game. Obviously the Badger card is incredibly mean. But the Bunny card is a bad example because it's dependent on a complicated game (full of entropy). This piece says that complicated games are what cards and effects should create, but the cards that are easiest for recovery are the ones that require the least setup, like Torrential Tribute and Pot of Duality.

Granted, it takes no skill to wipe somebody's field with TT. But to maximize your benefits from it, it requires that you be losing in monster presence. Justin Grabher-Meyer wrote on this but I can't find the article; the point of it was that
using card advantage to deprive your opponent of options, until all of your opponent's cards are dead, is the most effective way to ply card advantage into victory. Cards that defy that design are not [b]bad for the game[/b], but having 5 options while your opponent has 3 is not as [b]effective[/b] as keeping 2 options while your opponent has none. So as a [b]player[/b], I would seek the Badgeriest cards possible.

[quote name='-Griffin' timestamp='1344531734' post='6002034']
...[ I ]f an overpowered card fits good design principles, like encouraging high card entropy, player-player interaction, and comebacks, then it might be justified. Monster Reborn is a great example of this. It is certainly a very powerful card, but it has a greatest impact when you need a strong monster to hold on and don't have many ways to populate your field. I've seen it included in quite a few comebacks for sure, and it sets off many combos to increase card entropy. Pot of Greed is more debatable. It increases card entropy and is generally most useful when you're a bit behind, but it can simply make a format too fast and there isn't much skill to using it - you usually instantly activate it if you're lucky enough to draw it. If Exodia and other lockdowns and OTKs were removed from the format, I think PoG might quite happily sit on the limited list, albeit not perfectly designed with the luck it adds.
[/quote]

An issue with Pot of Greed is that, if someone plays a Deck that draws lots of cards fast (like Dark World), that player will draw into Pot of Greed more often than slow Decks that simply want to make a recovery. Dark World doesn't usually OTK (although it can), and while it does use control cards like Deck Devastation Virus and Skill Drain, they're not meant to form a lockdown. What Dark World gains from the +1 is a chance to eke out [i]more[/i] +1 effects and win through attrition, long before the slow player gets the chance to draw their PoG. So the game becomes slanted in favor of Decks that can pull off draws quickly.

[-Griffin]

I think you're missing the goal of this. The Badger card might be 'good' to put in a Deck or use, and the card you want in some situations, but it's bad design (bad 'for the game') because it's all about reducing options. Giving your opponent 0 options is, fundamentally, s*** game design. 'winmoar' cards might have a place in your Deck, but they shouldn't really have a place in the cardpool to begin with.

And yes, Torrential is a well-designed card because in that it's most effective when you're behind (see: 'comeback' section). The fact a single card can do this doesn't contradict the fact that most of the time, combinations of cards do this or do it more effectively.

[newhat]

Cards shouldn't encourage attrition? Sounds tough. Compared to other games, Yu-Gi-Oh! is almost obsessively based on getting rid of things. Magic: The Gathering has field-versus-field combat rather than single combat, so simplification is more gradual, and the mana system keeps control and OTKs in check. But because of the mana system, there are game-changing cards that cost lots of mana, and speeding those in leads to incredibly lopsided games where all of Player A's mana/cards don't leave a scratch on Player B. There are tools to get rid of those lethal mana-sinks, but because those tools cost mana, frequently the mana-sinks stay out and cause a headache.

The Pokeymans card game has the "1 Energy attach per turn/1 level of Evolution per turn" rules, and not much removal. Plus there's tons of drawpower. So barring an exceptional lockdown, both players are going to start and end the game with tons of entropy. But because the buildup takes so long, almost every Deck rides a shortcut through the system to fire off ballistic missiles as fast as possible. And there aren't any Traps, so if you're using the 80% of cards that only work in "slow buildup" mode, you don't stand a chance.

tl;dr: Cheap simplifying tools lead to tactical abuse. Slow, high-entropy tools lead to systematic abuse.

[seattleite]

Sure, I agree that increasing entropy is better than decreasing. Solemn is really bad design cause it stops any kind of comeback. I get that. But not all cards have to be about gaining more options. Fossil Dyna (the first effect) slows the game and makes itself a target for your opponent, restricting options without decreasing entropy. Full Lockdowns are bad but control elements encourage creative plays (Not talking about Gravity Bind or things that you have to use MST on, but . Fossil Dyna might not be the "best" example of a well-designed control card, but you get the point.

Deck Design does requires skill, it's not an exact science. Cards like PoG and Monster Reborn are used by 99% of players, as super-staples players have to use them if they are serious about their deck, which is not skillful. They also help gamewinning plays just as much as comeback plays. They are overpowered and don't have any useful purpose in the game, other than to make games more topdeck-y and luck based, which Yugioh really doesn't need.

15000 sounds like a good number. Right now there's not much reason to chip away at the opponent's Life Points because if you get rid of all their options, you win by default. 15000 gives people a reason to chip away without really controlling the field.

[-Griffin]

[quote]
Cards shouldn't encourage attrition? Sounds tough. Compared to other games, Yu-Gi-Oh! is almost obsessively based on getting rid of things. Magic: The Gathering has field-versus-field combat rather than single combat, so simplification is more gradual, and the mana system keeps control and OTKs in check. But because of the mana system, there are game-changing cards that cost lots of mana, and speeding those in leads to incredibly lopsided games where all of Player A's mana/cards don't leave a scratch on Player B. There are tools to get rid of those lethal mana-sinks, but because those tools cost mana, frequently the mana-sinks stay out and cause a headache.

The Pokeymans card game has the "1 Energy attach per turn/1 level of Evolution per turn" rules, and not much removal. Plus there's tons of drawpower. So barring an exceptional lockdown, both players are going to start and end the game with tons of entropy. But because the buildup takes so...[/quote]

I can agree that no game has been perfectly designed (otherwise we'd all be playing it). I haven't played enough Pokemon or MTG to comment much on them, but I generally dislike the way magic mixes mana-generation into the Deck so it's very possible to draw too many or too few of them and have not enough things to summon or not enough to summon things, but a mana-based system where they aren't mixed into the Deck could be a good design for curbing bursty plays too early into the game. I don't feel Yugioh's design is fundamentally about getting rid of things. Those are just the strongest cards right now.

[quote name='seattleite' timestamp='1344632090' post='6003306']
Sure, I agree that increasing entropy is better than decreasing. Solemn is really bad design cause it stops any kind of comeback. I get that. But not all cards have to be about gaining more options. Fossil Dyna (the first effect) slows the game and makes itself a target for your opponent, restricting options without decreasing entropy. Full Lockdowns are bad but control elements encourage creative plays (Not talking about Gravity Bind or things that you have to use MST on, but . Fossil Dyna might not be the "best" example of a well-designed control card, but you get the point.

Deck Design does requires skill, it's not an exact science. Cards like PoG and Monster Reborn are used by 99% of players, as super-staples players have to use them if they are serious about their deck, which is not skillful. They also help gamewinning plays just as much as comeback plays. They are overpowered and don't have any useful purpose in the game, other than to make games more topdeck-y and luck based, which Yugioh really doesn't need.

15000 sounds like a good number. Right now there's not much reason to chip away at the opponent's Life Points because if you get rid of all their options, you win by default. 15000 gives people a reason to chip away without really controlling the field.
[/quote]

Actually, I totally agree with your point on Fossil Dyna. Fossil Dyna's design, in an isolated environment, is pretty good. It's a pretty weak, destructible monster that causes interesting things to happen with the game. I think he manages to get used in pretty fun ways too, but he definitely has the potential to cause annoying lockdowns when provided with other cards. In contrast to something like Horus Lv8, his weak stats make the restricting effect more ok - you can usually run over him or blow him up with effects.

I agree that Deck Design can be fun and requires some skill, but I definitely feel Reborn does more when you're behind than when you're ahead, as far as evening out the field goes. 5, maybe even 10, 'overpowered' limited cards which make the game more fun and have good design principles are probably fine. You're still using skill to design the Deck. When you have 30 staple cards and you basically just select an engine to go with it, then you have the problem.