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My Feedback (gameplay, rewards, progression)
Netheniel
✭✭✭
My feedback is based on playing exclusively with NPCs. I just reached rank 3 (~3500 XP or ~80 games).
Presentation
One of the things I love about Magic the Gathering is the art style and love put into each card, and of course the diversity put into each deck. It really helps lure me into their universe. The art style in ToT however is plain and less exiting. I find this a missed opportunity because the art you use for the loading screens look amazing. Realistically, I'm not expecting any change here as this is what was budgeted for the mini-game, but I feel this should be surfaced as part of a retrospective and hopefully something to consider in your future endeavours. Outside of the cards themselves, the environment is lacking details. The coin is flat textured (id rather see a 3D stack of them), there's no lighting or shading on the table to give the impression of being in a tavern setting, no mugs with mead, and the audio cues for certain card effects lack umph.
Progression & Difficulty
It takes way too long to raise your rank. I have a 100% win rate with novice NPCs, and yet I'm only a rank 3 "trainee". Proficient and Masters won't even play me, despite my 80 win streak. If there's a harder NPC difficulty to be played, then I think I earned the right to challenge myself after 80 victories with novice NPCs. Please look into this.
Gameplay - Immersion
Using a shared deck for both players eliminates a lot of the wonder and diversity that comes with playing these card games. It's easy to spot what unique trait each deck brings to the game and some are more enjoyable than others. Had you gone the route of Magic the Gathering by letting players choose which race/cult deck to play with and with each deck offering a unique, but balanced economy/defensive/offensive play style, it would have created a more engaging and immersive experience. And like Magic the Gathering, you could include lore with each of these cards, further luring players into your universe. As it is, the game is as vanilla as vanilla can get.
Gameplay - Strategy & Economy
* This card game advocates spam clicking on cards, especially at the beginning since they serve no other purpose other than to bump your coin count up. You could easily replace those cards with a dice roll and that becomes your economy for that round. This system doesn't work as well as I think it was meant to.
* The combo systems are too reliant on RNG. You should have rules to allow a player to stay some cards for the next turn, so they can more effectively strategize their combos. Some games, I may never get a combo. In other games, I will get a massive power play as the purple cards keep rolling out, feeding card after card as I absolutely decimate the opponent. This is not skill, it's luck. A card game has some luck involved, but never like that. A good card game needs to be better balanced against one sided victories.
Gameplay - Modes & Extensions
The card game needs custom modes and extensions to make it more interesting.
1. Option to disable patron victory.
2. Last standing mode. Coins persist between turns, but as the game goes on more and more coins are deducted. In addition to the normal rules, players who fall below 0 coins will lose the match.
3. Random events. Add some mechanic involving random encounters that may give boons or consequences. A Daedric event for example may give a player a boon in one turn, but it will come at a cost in a future turn.
Rewards
And finally we get to the rewards. In short, not good. I don't need more food and drink. I don't need more leather hides and rubedite ore. And I don't need more transmutation stones. What I do need are motifs and grains. You know that new Ancestral Breton style locked behind rare treasure maps, followed by RNG leads in those said chests? Wouldn't it be great if I could earn a chance to acquire a set of that style before I die of old age? How about giving players ToT tokens, which we can then be spent at an NPC vendor who will offer these goods for _reasonable_ tokens? Treasure maps, leads, monetary value, resources, and sure, even food and drinks if someone wants that. I'm thinking of a system like FF14's casino. You play all sorts of games, earn tokens, then spend those at various vendors. It's easy, you play ToT for fun, then treat yourself when you've saved up enough to get what you want. Everybody wins.
But if that isn't going to happen, then please, at least stack tribute containers so my inventory isn't cluttered and only mail me to prize if I don't have inventory space to store the container. Clicking though a dozen mails and deleting them is a horrible user experience.
Presentation
One of the things I love about Magic the Gathering is the art style and love put into each card, and of course the diversity put into each deck. It really helps lure me into their universe. The art style in ToT however is plain and less exiting. I find this a missed opportunity because the art you use for the loading screens look amazing. Realistically, I'm not expecting any change here as this is what was budgeted for the mini-game, but I feel this should be surfaced as part of a retrospective and hopefully something to consider in your future endeavours. Outside of the cards themselves, the environment is lacking details. The coin is flat textured (id rather see a 3D stack of them), there's no lighting or shading on the table to give the impression of being in a tavern setting, no mugs with mead, and the audio cues for certain card effects lack umph.
Progression & Difficulty
It takes way too long to raise your rank. I have a 100% win rate with novice NPCs, and yet I'm only a rank 3 "trainee". Proficient and Masters won't even play me, despite my 80 win streak. If there's a harder NPC difficulty to be played, then I think I earned the right to challenge myself after 80 victories with novice NPCs. Please look into this.
Gameplay - Immersion
Using a shared deck for both players eliminates a lot of the wonder and diversity that comes with playing these card games. It's easy to spot what unique trait each deck brings to the game and some are more enjoyable than others. Had you gone the route of Magic the Gathering by letting players choose which race/cult deck to play with and with each deck offering a unique, but balanced economy/defensive/offensive play style, it would have created a more engaging and immersive experience. And like Magic the Gathering, you could include lore with each of these cards, further luring players into your universe. As it is, the game is as vanilla as vanilla can get.
Gameplay - Strategy & Economy
* This card game advocates spam clicking on cards, especially at the beginning since they serve no other purpose other than to bump your coin count up. You could easily replace those cards with a dice roll and that becomes your economy for that round. This system doesn't work as well as I think it was meant to.
* The combo systems are too reliant on RNG. You should have rules to allow a player to stay some cards for the next turn, so they can more effectively strategize their combos. Some games, I may never get a combo. In other games, I will get a massive power play as the purple cards keep rolling out, feeding card after card as I absolutely decimate the opponent. This is not skill, it's luck. A card game has some luck involved, but never like that. A good card game needs to be better balanced against one sided victories.
Gameplay - Modes & Extensions
The card game needs custom modes and extensions to make it more interesting.
1. Option to disable patron victory.
2. Last standing mode. Coins persist between turns, but as the game goes on more and more coins are deducted. In addition to the normal rules, players who fall below 0 coins will lose the match.
3. Random events. Add some mechanic involving random encounters that may give boons or consequences. A Daedric event for example may give a player a boon in one turn, but it will come at a cost in a future turn.
Rewards
And finally we get to the rewards. In short, not good. I don't need more food and drink. I don't need more leather hides and rubedite ore. And I don't need more transmutation stones. What I do need are motifs and grains. You know that new Ancestral Breton style locked behind rare treasure maps, followed by RNG leads in those said chests? Wouldn't it be great if I could earn a chance to acquire a set of that style before I die of old age? How about giving players ToT tokens, which we can then be spent at an NPC vendor who will offer these goods for _reasonable_ tokens? Treasure maps, leads, monetary value, resources, and sure, even food and drinks if someone wants that. I'm thinking of a system like FF14's casino. You play all sorts of games, earn tokens, then spend those at various vendors. It's easy, you play ToT for fun, then treat yourself when you've saved up enough to get what you want. Everybody wins.
But if that isn't going to happen, then please, at least stack tribute containers so my inventory isn't cluttered and only mail me to prize if I don't have inventory space to store the container. Clicking though a dozen mails and deleting them is a horrible user experience.
1
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Skvysh✭✭✭Progression & Difficulty
It takes way too long to raise your rank. I have a 100% win rate with novice NPCs, and yet I'm only a rank 3 "trainee". Proficient and Masters won't even play me, despite my 80 win streak. If there's a harder NPC difficulty to be played, then I think I earned the right to challenge myself after 80 victories with novice NPCs. Please look into this.
The difficulty of opponents you can challenge increases with rank - rank 4 for proficient and rank 6 for expert. AI games intentionally give low XP because you can close a game against all 3 difficulties of opponents in <2 minutes.Gameplay - Immersion
Using a shared deck for both players eliminates a lot of the wonder and diversity that comes with playing these card games. It's easy to spot what unique trait each deck brings to the game and some are more enjoyable than others. Had you gone the route of Magic the Gathering by letting players choose which race/cult deck to play with and with each deck offering a unique, but balanced economy/defensive/offensive play style, it would have created a more engaging and immersive experience. And like Magic the Gathering, you could include lore with each of these cards, further luring players into your universe. As it is, the game is as vanilla as vanilla can get.
Gameplay - Strategy & Economy
* This card game advocates spam clicking on cards, especially at the beginning since they serve no other purpose other than to bump your coin count up. You could easily replace those cards with a dice roll and that becomes your economy for that round. This system doesn't work as well as I think it was meant to.
* The combo systems are too reliant on RNG. You should have rules to allow a player to stay some cards for the next turn, so they can more effectively strategize their combos. Some games, I may never get a combo. In other games, I will get a massive power play as the purple cards keep rolling out, feeding card after card as I absolutely decimate the opponent. This is not skill, it's luck. A card game has some luck involved, but never like that. A good card game needs to be better balanced against one sided victories.
Apples to oranges - this a deck builder, not a classic TCG/CCG with constructed decks. It's not a new mechanic/genre either, it has been established over the years to work just fine at its core. Whether it's executed or not properly - that's another story.
1