Are Contracts a Problematic Card Type?

Personofsecrets

I'm going to keep my nasty thoughts to myself about this happening, but I do think that the larger idea could be worth discussing.

Are Contract cards a problematic card type?

There are Contracts that are too cheap and blow out games such as those found in the Sorcerer-King Patron or even Tithe.

There are Contract agents which not only blow out positions, but also demand to be dealt with.

There are Contracts which serve as resource extenders and blow out what would have otherwise been fair games through their stacking.

If the duplicate card theory is true, then maybe many of these issues could be greatly diminished. That said, one could still win the Tavern lottery with cards like Wraith to do a huge amount of damage out of nowhere or create unfair early games such as with what Grand Oratory has the power to do.

So are they problematic?

Personofsecrets

This was my third turn by the way, the game was only 1 minute deep at the end of this turn. This turn, I even got to buy a Sorcer King card to combo with my first turn purchase! Wow, such fun, how skill, much exciting, very digital card game.

spartaxoxo

No. They aren't. Some randomness is to be expected and is part of the fun of playing card games.

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No. They aren't. Some randomness is to be expected and is part of the fun of playing card games.

Do note that only one of the above issues pointed out with the contract cards has to do with randomness. That is the third point where I mention Constract stacking.

Not only should cards be evaluated from multiple perspectives, but when discussing randomness, the duplicate card theory should also play a role in making judgement. That is because if it really is the case that the game is as far less than random as it seems to be, then Contract stacking and their combos are likely functioning in a way that is stronger than intended.

Personally, I've been pretty good about documenting opening play Delmene Contract stacking. Keep in mind that these games can only happen when Delmene is a patron. Although I don't have the exact number of games played, it could probably be determined that there isn't enough time in the day to be experiencing the Contract stack the number of times that I have with any reasonable likelihood. It's 2 of 3 cards in an 80 card deck that show up within the first 5 to 10 cards.

And although randomness is an aspect of card games, there is obvioualy a limit to how much randomness that there should be and how much said randomness should be able to sway game outcomes. For example, if a contract said "you win," then many games that feature it might as well be coin toss rather than cards. In another sense, games can have cards like Piloted Shredder or Dr. Boom which have a huge number of outcomes. Again, the question of how much agency is left in the players hands is brought into question. With these cards, the answer depends on what they end up doing in each specific case and that just goes to show the ugly nature of layered random effects. This is all beyond "some randomness."

But anyhow, there are these other reasons mentioned about the Contract cards being that they can cost too little, be too strong, or be too demanding of a player response. These types of things matter since, unlike non-Contracts, Contracts have an immediate game impact.

sayswhoto

On the competitive ladder, contract cards can be problematic since they can cause a loss when it should've been a win. That could mean losing ~100+ points in rank. Playing casually for fun, I don't see a real issue.

I'm undecided on Tithe. It can add more strategy than randomness since patron favors are more controllable. I've noticed some of the top ladder players like to weave in patron pressure as well as playing out a strategy. I never really encountered that in the mid portions of the ladder and this has made the game more interesting for me as I continue to learn about ToT.

spartaxoxo

I mean a royal flush is an i-win sequence but few would say Poker is not an acceptable card game. Part of the fun of cards it that luck can favor you. It's a major part of their appeal. Yeah, there should be a limit. But when the same players are consistently at the top, then that shows that when more than one game is played, randomness is only so much of a factor. And that in aggregate, the best players are going to win way more consistently. That's the role luck should play imo.

As for the duplicates, that probably should be looked into to make sure they aren't offering more than they want them to occur. But, to me, that's separate from the contract cards as a whole.

LunaFlora

no

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I mean a royal flush is an i-win sequence but few would say Poker is not an acceptable card game. Part of the fun of cards it that luck can favor you. It's a major part of their appeal. Yeah, there should be a limit. But when the same players are consistently at the top, then that shows that when more than one game is played, randomness is only so much of a factor. And that in aggregate, the best players are going to win way more consistently. That's the role luck should play imo.

As for the duplicates, that probably should be looked into to make sure they aren't offering more than they want them to occur. But, to me, that's separate from the contract cards as a whole.

That is an interesting comparison since Poker is a game with cards. But it is also somewhat of an off comparison since players can chose not to play rounds of Poker based on what they see in play.

Exodia, from the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game may be an interesting comparison too since that involves assembling a number of cards that win the game. In this case, players can't choose to just not interact with the game if they don't like their start. It's also sort of funny that some of the video games for Yu-Gi-Oh! get the feel of the cartoon right by having players that are doing questionable things.

https://youtu.be/sIaEpn2SAPU?t=9

One last comparison I'll mention is Magic the Gathering since there is a system around classifying game winning combos. Some even say that the CEDH format is all about combos. There are game pieces that players can use to win with A+B combos that aren't particularly skill intensive, but one balancing aspect to these game pieces is that players could hypothetically interact with such combos and even if that means that players must bring a certain deck composition to the table.

https://youtu.be/dzxgzMKZbw0?t=65

Where TOT then comes in is that it's a game that has moves which might as well be considered to be game winning, but there is limited to no interaction in these processes because of how various Contract cards work. From the perspective of my opponent, they had a really limited window to do anything about the Contract stack that happened. They technically could have in this case, but buying a piece of the combo up would have been a large mistake in my opinion.

I don't find the luck aspect of games to be appealing. When luck is on my side, I tend to feel contempt that is directed toward the game. Sometimes I audibly curse. There is also another aspect of the conversation that I rarely see mentioned and that is how unappealing it is to experience bad luck. I think that it's a mistake to not look at this dimension of chance based games since it would be biased to only look at when players are feeling good about things. Some games even try to mitigate this type of effect by having players play against bots where they are likely to do well. A bot isn't going to get upset about bad luck, so that is a sneaky way that some designers make their games feel less bad overall.

And this feel bad aspect isn't just what I may experience. I've gotten a number of players of various skill levels rage at me over luck and tell me that I'm cheating. To the degree that their reasoning regarding chance is flawed, I'm unsure, but what they perceive is luck is obviously frustrating them nonetheless.

And that's where I see my suggestions generally coming in. While I do agree that chance based games give players ways to differentiate themselves from each other based on skills including how they deal with those chance based things, I tend to think that players should be able to differentiate themselves with the fewest games possible. That is to say that if a game is so random that better players are only able to prove their skill over an inhuman number of games played, then that would be a bad game that could be improved.

In the case of Contract luck, I'd at least like to see the ceiling of what is possible to be lowered since there are lines of play through stacking Contracts that do too much. In my example, I just shouldn't be pushing 18 Prestige out of nowhere from a hand that was just 4 gold and a power generating starter card. I don't find a reason that this type of thing should be a possibility and the fact that it is possible shows poor balance. And even strict fun maximizing is a goal, i think that the Contract system would be better with a more restricted ceiling on what is allowed. Exactly how much does luck have to impact someone in order for them to feel good? Isn't it possible that a smaller amount of impact of luck has a similar enough effect?

As for the card duplication theory, the theory cares most about cards that work together in the strongest ways. If I had gotten a pair of Luxury Exports in my game instead of a pair of Mines, maybe I would still be quite advantaged, but the game wouldn't have been essentially over. That means that some cards have larger impact on games when they are paired up than other what other cards have. Therefore, maybe some contracts aren't a huge deal, but a number of them are quite abusive when combined with themselves and that makes me considered them to be a problem related to the duplicate card theory. Yes, the game should be free of bugs regardless of what cards that such bugs may impact, but some strategies may benefit from bugs more.

One point of clarification since I wrote something incorrect earlier. i wrote that the TOT deck is 80 cards. I was only thinking of the Patron decks though. The neutral deck adds another 20 cards to the mix, so that makes duplicate cards in the early game even less likely. Who knows, maybe this type of thing that I've been complaining about is even an intended mechanic. It's unclear without development response.

Necrotech_Master

i think the way contracts are designed are fine, the biggest issue ive noticed with them is in very long games

there are a finite number of other cards (4x copies per card, except the starter), so once both players combined have a vast majority of these finite cards in the deck, the tavern will basically be stripped down to almost nothing but contract cards (ive been in some matches against the npc where i was basically toying with it and intentionally doing a longer match to see what happens lol)

El_Borracho

@spartaxoxo I agree with the basis of your argument, but the way the RNG has been functioning in ToT, you almost have to expect the royal flush. I used to ignore Ebony Mine if I did not have a Hlaalu card, now I grab it expecting another Ebony Mine to pop up. Same goes for the Mora contract cards (with the exception of the Mora contract agent) as the chances of getting a duplicate are outweighed by your opponent getting the duplicates.

If the RNG functioned properly, the tactic of chasing contract cards would go away.

spartaxoxo

El_Borracho wrote: »

I agree with the basis of your argument, but the way the RNG has been functioning in ToT, you almost have to expect the royal flush. I used to ignore Ebony Mine if I did not have a Hlaalu card, now I grab it expecting another Ebony Mine to pop up. Same goes for the Mora contract cards (with the exception of the Mora contract agent) as the chances of getting a duplicate are outweighed by your opponent getting the duplicates.

If the RNG functioned properly, the tactic of chasing contract cards would go away.

That seems to me a problem with the RNG. And I've had the same RNG issue with regular cards as well. If that sort of thing only happened occasionally, it would feel the way it should and would be an appropriately risky strategy. e.g I'll try to deny an enemy a key card only for it to be replaced by the same one.

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I agree with the basis of your argument, but the way the RNG has been functioning in ToT, you almost have to expect the royal flush. I used to ignore Ebony Mine if I did not have a Hlaalu card, now I grab it expecting another Ebony Mine to pop up. Same goes for the Mora contract cards (with the exception of the Mora contract agent) as the chances of getting a duplicate are outweighed by your opponent getting the duplicates.

If the RNG functioned properly, the tactic of chasing contract cards would go away.

That seems to me a problem with the RNG. And I've had the same RNG issue with regular cards as well. If that sort of thing only happened occasionally, it would feel the way it should and would be an appropriately risky strategy. e.g I'll try to deny an enemy a key card only for it to be replaced by the same one.

There is a practical aspect of the issue too. What is more likely to be fixed? A game wide RNG issue or cards that become more unbalanced due to repeat RNG?

It's honestly hard to tell.

spartaxoxo

Personofsecrets wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I agree with the basis of your argument, but the way the RNG has been functioning in ToT, you almost have to expect the royal flush. I used to ignore Ebony Mine if I did not have a Hlaalu card, now I grab it expecting another Ebony Mine to pop up. Same goes for the Mora contract cards (with the exception of the Mora contract agent) as the chances of getting a duplicate are outweighed by your opponent getting the duplicates.

If the RNG functioned properly, the tactic of chasing contract cards would go away.

That seems to me a problem with the RNG. And I've had the same RNG issue with regular cards as well. If that sort of thing only happened occasionally, it would feel the way it should and would be an appropriately risky strategy. e.g I'll try to deny an enemy a key card only for it to be replaced by the same one.

There is a practical aspect of the issue too. What is more likely to be fixed? A game wide RNG issue or cards that become more unbalanced due to repeat RNG?

It's honestly hard to tell.

I don't think either are likely to get fixed. But they've at least already said they'll take a look at the RNG.

Necrotech_Master

doing a quick compute:

each deck has 21 total cards (1 starter + 20 of the deck themed cards), for the calculations though we can ignore the starter card

however each deck has varying amounts of contract cards:

pelin has 2 contracts
hlaalu has 3 contracts
crow has 2 contracts
psijic has 3 contracts
hunding has 3 contracts
rahjin has 5 contracts
red eagle has 15 contracts (3/4 of the deck)
orgnum has 6 contracts
druid has 4 contracts
almalexia has 5 contracts
mora has 8 contracts

the treasury is entirely contract cards, which also totals 20 cards

so regardless of which deck is chosen there is a total of 20x4 + 20 cards (100 cards)

the % of them being contracts is going to vary depending on the decks in play

minimum: 20 treasury cards + 10 deck contract cards (4 starter decks: pelin, hlaalu, crow, psijic), or 30/100 cards, or 30% of the cards in the tavern will be contract cards when play starts

maximum: 20 treasury cards + 34 deck contract cards (red eagle, orgnum, mora, and either almalexia or rahjin), for 54/100 cards, or 54% of cards in the tavern will be contract cards when play starts

as players buy cards, this removes them from the tavern increasing chance to get contracts, if players remove cards from their deck, they go back in the tavern (unless the destroyed card is a coin, writ of coin, or starter card, those are just remove from the game)