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Expanding lore, adding guilds and more


Sykole

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Long post? TL;DR: 1- New card affinities. 2- Guilds. 3- Adding lore. 4- Potion consumables.

Concept: If creating new cards is out of reach, why not make use of the available things we have access to? Like creating new game systems/mechanics out of thin air with minimal work, just like quests; it's a glorified database with a tracking system, but will that alone be enough on the long run?

Ideas:

1 - Creating new type of affinity(s) (if plausible): Just stick another random affinity color; same card model, different in-game effects.

2- Increasing the ecosystem that have little to do with the actual game mechanics:

  • Take Minecraft servers for example. They create something out of nothing with a gamemode like King of the Hill; it's the same game mechanics of Minecraft, but with some spicy Java plugins that track each player's movements, give them points, give them EXP, and so forth.

 

  • So this brings us to the next point: Why not create Guilds? Why not implement Guild PvP Wars? If you think about it, it's just /guild in the chat to message your guild, a new tab in the Friends window labelled 'Guild', and a leaderboard. As evident by the Quests tab, it appears that you have quite a bit of control over the client editing with graphical drawing (the green reserve thing). 

 

3- Adding some spice: Everything in the game has a lore, so why not give Quests lore? Say for example, they are missions given by Moon or Mo, and when completing a quest, it would display a dialogue box with either of their pictures, like they are informing you that you completed said quest with a sound effect? "Good job Skylord, you assisted us greatly" - Moon says, filling the empty void in my heart.

It's all for the sake of adding familiarity and character to the game, instead of being just a bunch of text about what reserve BFP is or whatever. What even is BFP? Why would a Skylord need that? Give me lore! Give me context!

Another idea: "Hey Sykole, I see you lost the map Empire twice. Skylords know no defeat! Make sure to do XYZ, it might help you pass the map!" - I see after the welcome screen in a dialogue box said by Moon, for example. 

4- Consumables and Collectables: Only reason I would open a gold chest is either for a quest or ... nothing else really, I get 4k+ gold every 15min of playtime in rPvE, why care about a 100gold chest? So, instead of just gold, introduce consumables and collectables. A whole new concept to the game. 

  • Potions: Arranged in slots just like the in-game deck cards, but on the right side for example. One is called the Time potion, reduces your recasting time by 15 seconds. Want an additional layer to the mechanic? Enter levelling, where the higher your in-game rank, the longer your potions last/increase in power. You could have healing potions, strength potions, anything really. They just have to be rare, untradable and orb-neutral.

 

  • Enter; collectables: People and myself included love trophies, so just add random icons next to ours names. Complete all the achievements and you get an icon, right next to your PvP rank, or temporary colored names much like that of mods/gms. 

 

  • Why stop there? Add event passes. Each month/season you can purchase a pass with 3000 BFP. This pass lasts for until the end of the season. You get 10% more gold, you get slightly better booster chances, slightly more EXP and so forth. Even get your name highlighted in gold, for example.

 

 

Note: Those are just quick examples off the top, they are not literal but I find that if they are properly implemented (I do not know what your limitations are when modifying the game), the game will thrive even more and will give it more purpose than just collecting the most promo harvesters. 

Edited by Sykole
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A fun gamemode could be a deck switch - make a deck (fitting some card requirements, so for example 6 T1 cards, four units, two spells/one spell + one building, 10 T2 cards containing the color of the first orb, 4 T3 cards), then you and your opponent switch these decks and try to beat each other with the other persons garbage.

Pro mode - blindfold on all Power values - costs, Void pool, Usable pool, ya gotta keep a track of that in your head

PvP with fog of war - against original BattleForge principles, but adds some new strategy making

Otherwise any BFP and Gold dumps are a good idea - an extremely expensive 'anything' to strive towards, as it was with Promos in the old days - nametag, card, consumable, chat color... definitely in support of that idea.

Adding spice is fun and nice, why not do it.

Overall makes the game more lively and modern, seconding this.

EDIT: nice to see you alive @Sykole

Edited by anonyme0273
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As I had already suggested in my thread:

 

Add a tome mode. So you get for a pve map 5 cards of each tier, They will be of 2 colours and each tier will have 2 units 2 spells, 1 random. You dont have to buy the decks, Its basically a random deck for the map to spice it up

Similar for Pvp, just a little different, rereadable in my thread

Edited by Buddelmuddel
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On 2/13/2021 at 2:39 PM, anonyme0273 said:

A fun gamemode could be a deck switch - make a deck (fitting some card requirements, so for example 6 T1 cards, four units, two spells/one spell + one building, 10 T2 cards containing the color of the first orb, 4 T3 cards), then you and your opponent switch these decks and try to beat each other with the other persons garbage.

Pro mode - blindfold on all Power values - costs, Void pool, Usable pool, ya gotta keep a track of that in your head

PvP with fog of war - against original BattleForge principles, but adds some new strategy making

Otherwise any BFP and Gold dumps are a good idea - an extremely expensive 'anything' to strive towards, as it was with Promos in the old days - nametag, card, consumable, chat color... definitely in support of that idea.

Adding spice is fun and nice, why not do it.

Overall makes the game more lively and modern, seconding this.

EDIT: nice to see you alive @Sykole

Yeah exactly. The game needs a constant flow of new ideas and updates, but since the development is limited to how much can actually be changed, we will just implement a workaround. 

In all honesty, I think the Skylords development team should create a separate team that solely focuses on coming up and implementing changes, while having a clear goal in mind; much like a balancing team, their only purpose is to keep things changing and fresh.

When you come to think of it: Is there really any point to the game after finishing the campaign, if you are not a PvP player? Achievements are meaningless if you have BFP. That's why I find that it is not a good thing to have everything revolve ONLY around how much BFP you have.

Imagine this for an example: The top player creates a guild. It's only natural that everyone else that is good will only join that guild. Now, what if the rewards are distributed 60/40, and only the leader gets the fancy collectables? Players will want to create their own guilds rather than following someone, which creates competition. <-- This is what I mean by creating an ecosystem that is run by the players. 

Other games focus their attention on earning money from microtransactions, but this is not the case here. So the question to the current game designers is, what do you seek? Playtime? Enjoyment? It should be made clear to the players, or nothing will change from when the game was managed by EA.

And yeah, I am glad to be back :)

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On 2/13/2021 at 4:02 PM, Buddelmuddel said:

As I had already suggested in my thread:

 

Add a tome mode. So you get for a pve map 5 cards of each tier, They will be of 2 colours and each tier will have 2 units 2 spells, 1 random. You dont have to buy the decks, Its basically a random deck for the map to spice it up

Similar for Pvp, just a little different, rereadable in my thread

Then you can also go the extra mile and copy more from existing trading card games.
Like for PvE and PvP add a Draft Mode.
You get maybe 3-4 card options per deck slot to choose from. You will then go successively go through slot 1-20 to fill it with one of the options. You will never see the options in the next slot until you chose for the previous one. Or maybe give a bigger card pool and have to choose simultaneously for like 5 slots, to reduce the randomness and allow for better planning.

Issue here:
Small dev team trying to implement a whole new function into the game which has most likely no base at all implemented by original devs.
-> Lot of work. Personally I'd first love to see the base game fixed/polished to become a more attractive game for the long term than going directly into adding up layers on a bad groundwork. Same for OP ideas about guilds, lore, potions or new affinities. The last two are also glaring issues balancing wise. The base balance is already borked as it is, don't mess it up with new stuff until that's adressed.

Edited by Darcurse
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On 2/15/2021 at 11:40 AM, Darcurse said:

Then you can also go the extra mile and copy more from existing trading card games.
Like for PvE and PvP add a Draft Mode.
You get maybe 3-4 card options per deck slot to choose from. You will then go successively go through slot 1-20 to fill it with one of the options. You will never see the options in the next slot until you chose for the previous one. Or maybe give a bigger card pool and have to choose simultaneously for like 5 slots, to reduce the randomness and allow for better planning.

Issue here:
Small dev team trying to implement a whole new function into the game which has most likely no base at all implemented by original devs.
-> Lot of work. Personally I'd first love to see the base game fixed/polished to become a more attractive game for the long term than going directly into adding up layers on a bad groundwork. Same for OP ideas about guilds, lore, potions or new affinities. The last two are also glaring issues balancing wise. The base balance is already borked as it is, don't mess it up with new stuff until that's adressed.

From my experience in game designing and development of frontend and backend, it really isn't a big deal to "implement a new function into the game", since not much functionality goes into the game itself; it's all in the server (Unless there is some obstacle I don't know of in BF). Plus, if a new mobile team is deployed to handle such implementations on the test server, fiki and the inner circle devs will not have to work unnecessarily and will be able to focus on their main duties. 

Regarding polishing the game, I'd like to hear your thoughts more on that. What do you mean by polishing? My experience with the game, starting from EA's beta up until now has been really good, all things considered, but that's just me.

And yeah, of course it will bring balancing issues, but those can be sorted out. This is just a baseline of what COULD be implemented in the game without changing the core game mechanics. 

It would also help if one of the team would reply, because it feels like I am a blabbering toddler at this point haha 

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Implementing a new mode into the game that isn't really supported would take some doing in my opinion.
Just going by the draft idea:
1) Implement an alternative lobby for the mode
2) Implement a system which substitutes the regular deck with the one from draft
3) Implement the actual draft system and balance how the cards are choosen
4) Implement countermeasures for people abusing the system like rejoining the lobby to redraft over and over again
5) Implement all the small stuff around it, like ranking system for example

Doesn't seem that much, but seeing the size of the Skylords dev system, I'd bet this would take some time.

----

Polishing the game:
1) Balance the cards
2) Balance the maps
3) Get rid of the smaller bugs / exploits
4) Redo the resource system to be actually worth something.
5) Buff the base content: Maps, cards, ways to synergies cards and give an actual "tcg" experience.


I don't know if there's something that can be done about the bfp, but the gold and upgrades are just grind. Something that was recognized to be abysmal by allowing card upgrades to be bought with gold. To be honest this is not a solution, but burning an open wound to treat it.
A grind on the 5) same maps which are the exact same on 3 different difficulties with 2) horrible balance in place that force you to do 3) exploits or build straight up 5) certain decks to manage.

The game can be fun playing it for like 20-30h don't get me wrong, but to me and most likely a lot others this is no long term entertainment.
You play everything on standard, you get through advance, learn the game and do some expert maps and *badabing badabom* you know everything there is, you have seen everything.
What's left?
1) PvP in a horrible balanced gameplay with bad matchmaking
2) Getting steamrolled by a couple of expert maps which then force you to study that specific map (look up a walkthrough basically), gather resources to redo your deck (which you actually like to play) and use exploits (because you don't want to waste hours on it trying to do it the legit way).
3) Farming every card and upgrade there is... Everyone who has fun with that: OK. You do you. But don't expect others to see this as "content".

And all of that without having any incentive to do so.

And this comes from a guy who loves to play games like L4D, Warhammer Vermintide, etc. Sure, different genre, but you basically do every map over and over again without any merit.

 

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On 2/15/2021 at 10:40 AM, Darcurse said:

Then you can also go the extra mile and copy more from existing trading card games.
Like for PvE and PvP add a Draft Mode.
You get maybe 3-4 card options per deck slot to choose from. You will then go successively go through slot 1-20 to fill it with one of the options. You will never see the options in the next slot until you chose for the previous one. Or maybe give a bigger card pool and have to choose simultaneously for like 5 slots, to reduce the randomness and allow for better planning.

Issue here:
Small dev team trying to implement a whole new function into the game which has most likely no base at all implemented by original devs.
-> Lot of work. Personally I'd first love to see the base game fixed/polished to become a more attractive game for the long term than going directly into adding up layers on a bad groundwork. Same for OP ideas about guilds, lore, potions or new affinities. The last two are also glaring issues balancing wise. The base balance is already borked as it is, don't mess it up with new stuff until that's adressed.

Dont think you need to go the extra mile, cause as you said it would take extra work.

 

The tome mode excisted already in the origiinal game. You would just have to adapt it, so that you open a tome for each map. And that the tome is not completly random out of all cards, but i would have different pools where the randoms cards get choosen from.

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