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Card rotation - season rewards (updated)


Xamos

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Hi fellow Skylords, 

I've got another idea that I would like to share. 

Has anyone ever thought about card rotation in BF? Would be a nice ongoing Event, similar to seasons.
Just an idea, but it could work like that:
before starting a match (PvE or PvP) you could click a checkbox to switch modes. Then you would only be able to use a deck that contains cards of the current editions that are 'active' (e. g. if lost souls is currently out of the rotation, if your deck would contain one card from the Lost Souls Edition, you wouldn't be able to start the game).

This should then come alongside a secondary leaderboard (both PvP rank and PvE times ) and reward people for what they achieve during such an Season-Event because that is what would be the encouraging factor to play that mode and restrict yourself.

And this would not be a free-cardpool that everyone can pick cards from (thus not as the free PvP decks). Rather a different mode to play the game, where you and your teammates/opponents have to use cards from a smaller total cardpool than normal, while still using your already owned cards only.

For the rotation itself:

  • I first thought that it would be fun to let the twilight-edition active all the time, but only accompanied by one other edition. Now that would mean that some double-colored cards would not be available while playing this mode. And you would still have access to the majority of meta cards. Probably not the best idea, but could still be fun to try out.
  • Now what would be quite awesome in my opinion is, if the cards that are selected to be in the rotation could be selected randomly, only based on orbs. What I mean by that is that each color and each tier would be 'thrown' in a seperate cardpool, and out of that cardpool around 40% are used for the current rotation. Thus only these 40% out of all cards could be used to play matches in the new mode.
    • Example: Fire T1 does have 21 cards - 40% = 8,4 so either 9 cards of that pool would be picked for the rotation if rounded up (or without accounting for affinities - 7 our of 17 different cards are picked)
      Same for all the other colors/tiers. e.g. Stonekin T3 has 12 cards including affinities => 5 cards are picked OR 6 distinct cards => 3 cards are picked
    • Rotation could be on for 2/3 or 4 months

 

This would need the following things to be implemented:

  • The rotation-system itself. The code to randomly select a bunch of cards. 
  • Card-Filter for the current rotation. 
  • Maybe separate new free PvP-decks specifically for that rotation. 
  • A new button, similar to the "ready" button. 
  • When the button is clicked, it would have to check the cards in your deck, if they are allowed in the current rotation. (or make this check when you click the ready button / the match start button) 
  • When the requirements are not met, a System-Information message would have to pop up (and maybe even tell you which cards are wrong, similar to when you copy a deck with some cards in it that you don't own). 
  • Or: when deckbuilding, the possibility to create a specific deck for the current rotation. Your collection would only show cards that are possible to pick for the deck. 

 

  • Possibly also a second leaderboard and a way to switch between both (with another button). Thus a second elo-rating for PvP and a second save for the fastest times on PvE maps. 
  • A way to reward players at the end of such a rotation for their leaderboard standings.

The rewards and second leaderboard could also be replaced by simple ingame-missions: "Play X map with a deck from the current rotation on expert. Reward: 500bfp" -> this could be an additional weekly mission, so total number of active missions would be 7 then. 

Edited by Xamos
The Idea left out mandatory considerations thus had to be described in more detail.
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The reason most TCG's introduce formats over time is because they can't keep releasing new cards without power creep (or the new cards being overshadowed by the basic sets). I don't see this work for Skylords Reborn for a couple of reasons:

• One of the biggest problems is how crucial the Twilight Edition is for BattleForge. It contains everything that sets each elements identity, and a lot of the basic spells (surge of light, eruption, etc). If you remove the Twilight Edition, you suddenly have a huge gap that the other sets don't fill in, especially since the Twilight Edition does not contain affinities, but all unique cards. 

• Set sizes are also very inconsistent:
- Twilight Edition: 200 unique cards
- Renegade edition: 60 cards (including affinities)
- Lost Souls Edition: 60 cards (including affinities)
- Amii Edition: 32 cards (including affinities)
- Rebirth Edition: 8 cards currently (some having affinities, 1 promo)

As you can see, if you cut Twilight Edition in a rotation, you are left with about 80 unique cards give or take, where currently you have access to about 280 unique cards. 
For Twilight to be rotating, you would basically need another base set that sets the foundation for a new format. Creating 100+ new cards is obviously not something we can do. 

Looking beyond Twilight Edition, cutting one of the other sets also does not make a lot of sense. Part of the issues here is that you are removing a color faction from the game with each cut expansion. If you cut the Renegade edition, you are now also removing (most) of the Bandit and Stonekin cards. Cut Lost Souls, and you get rid of Lost Souls and Twilight. While Amii Edition does provide a few cards for each faction, its definitely lackluster with it sets size of only 32 cards (including affinities). 

An argument can be made that the Amii Edition could be cut, but for what purpose? You are now removing playing pieces without adding anything new. While I love a challenge or restriction (I played the whole campaign on only Twilight Edition Shadow Nature cards for example), I doubt many players would enjoy having a set removed without anything cool to take its place, as is the case in most rotations. In a way, Twilight Edition is BattleForge's greatest asset, but also its greatest limitation. 

Long story short, I dont think a traditional rotation of sorts would work in BattleForge. Would i COULD see work, and might provide the kind of event-challenge you would be interested in, would be to have challenges that remove a specifically selected list of cards. This way you can push people to try out new strategies without relying on the known path, without removing a chunk of cards just because they happened to be in the same edition. 

 

 

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I guess this format would work better not in editions, but in faction limitations. One Season could be "Fire Cards only" etc.

You could make an automatic rotation, like every 2 weeks - and some extra reward if you play seasons (most likely Gold?).

Edited by Kapo
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@Majora thanks for the reply. I should have detailed my idea further I guess, doesn't make that much sense just as it is, because of the things you mentioned - which I am actually aware of 😄

Now the reason behind my idea was that I would have loved to relieve the process of new Editions being released for the game. It was soo epic in original Battleforge when the first new edition, renegade, got into the game. Suddenly being able to use new different stuff and expand your deck. And combine 2 colors, wow that was incredible. Got that feeling again when Lost Souls were released. Not so much with Amii because only one actual Amii card was added. 

I thought with a rotation like that I might be able to relieve that feeling at a small extent - when your obvious choice isn't available you have to get creative to create a new deck for the matches ahead. 

But yes, rotating by faction wouldn't make much sense now that everyone is used to have these color combinations already. For example that would exclude 'Lost-Souls-main' players if the LS Edition was cut for that mode. I'll update my original post. 

Edited by Xamos
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On 1/21/2022 at 10:21 AM, Majora said:

The reason most TCG's introduce formats over time is because they can't keep releasing new cards without power creep (or the new cards being overshadowed by the basic sets). I don't see this work for Skylords Reborn for a couple of reasons:

• One of the biggest problems is how crucial the Twilight Edition is for BattleForge. It contains everything that sets each elements identity, and a lot of the basic spells (surge of light, eruption, etc). If you remove the Twilight Edition, you suddenly have a huge gap that the other sets don't fill in, especially since the Twilight Edition does not contain affinities, but all unique cards. 

• Set sizes are also very inconsistent:
- Twilight Edition: 200 unique cards
- Renegade edition: 60 cards (including affinities)
- Lost Souls Edition: 60 cards (including affinities)
- Amii Edition: 32 cards (including affinities)
- Rebirth Edition: 8 cards currently (some having affinities, 1 promo)

As you can see, if you cut Twilight Edition in a rotation, you are left with about 80 unique cards give or take, where currently you have access to about 280 unique cards. 
For Twilight to be rotating, you would basically need another base set that sets the foundation for a new format. Creating 100+ new cards is obviously not something we can do. 

Looking beyond Twilight Edition, cutting one of the other sets also does not make a lot of sense. Part of the issues here is that you are removing a color faction from the game with each cut expansion. If you cut the Renegade edition, you are now also removing (most) of the Bandit and Stonekin cards. Cut Lost Souls, and you get rid of Lost Souls and Twilight. While Amii Edition does provide a few cards for each faction, its definitely lackluster with it sets size of only 32 cards (including affinities). 

An argument can be made that the Amii Edition could be cut, but for what purpose? You are now removing playing pieces without adding anything new. While I love a challenge or restriction (I played the whole campaign on only Twilight Edition Shadow Nature cards for example), I doubt many players would enjoy having a set removed without anything cool to take its place, as is the case in most rotations. In a way, Twilight Edition is BattleForge's greatest asset, but also its greatest limitation. 

Long story short, I dont think a traditional rotation of sorts would work in BattleForge. Would i COULD see work, and might provide the kind of event-challenge you would be interested in, would be to have challenges that remove a specifically selected list of cards. This way you can push people to try out new strategies without relying on the known path, without removing a chunk of cards just because they happened to be in the same edition. 

 

 

Game like “Eternal Card Game” has special edition , which rotates every few months, while it doesn’t cut whole sets it cut specific cards from sets. something similar in Skylords would be more fitting. 

P.S. I’ll always vote for making different  cards unplayable (you can’t start match with it) in pvp, so we have more freedom for fun in pve.

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  • Xamos changed the title to Card rotation - season rewards (updated)
10 hours ago, Xamos said:

@Majora What do you think about the idea now that I elaborated in more detail?

Let me start of by saying I love challenges and feel restrictions breed creativity. Im also an active Magic the Gathering player and used to play Heartstone, so I definitly see the appeal of card rotation in TCG. However, even with the adjustments to your idea, it still has flaws that would prevent a successful implementation for Skylords Reborn in my opinion.  

You mention having the selection be random instead. Let me start off by saying that automatically rules out this mode being realistic for PvP. We already saw this in the couple of Tome tournaments Toggy hosted. While great fun, scenario's where a faction suddenly does not have a counter to something they are supposed to have, has a dramatic ripple effect. In the tournament, this was different for each player, and information were semi-hidden till further along in the tournament.

But once you realize fire (for example) only has S units at tier 1, and nature has hurricane, there is a problem. What if Shadow gets the lucky end of the random draw and Witchclaw (a card nobody plays) gets removed, but fire loses eruption or sunstriders? Or a faction loses all its anti air units? 

For PvE, a similar problem arises. Quickly it will become clear which faction loses too much of its core cards to be viable. Instead of resulting in a breath of fresh air and additional playstyles, it would probably result in less options, and forcing players into the faction that has the best cards left. 

So is there no hope for restricting cards? Not necessarily. I believe it could be done on a lesser scale. For PvP, the tome tournaments, while unbalanced, where fun and caused interesting tactics and matches. I think a returning event could definitely work here, just not a ''this is active for a month''-kind-of-ungoing-event with global changes to each faction. 

For PvE, it could work if the cards selected where hand picked by the game designers. The problem: a lot of manual workload. 

As for some other things you mentioned, extra leaderbords, specific messages telling what exact cards are not legal in this new format (instead of ''your deck is not valid''), new filters and automatically handing out (new) rewards all are more work than people probably realise. There is a reason some of the more obvious QoL and interesting features are still not implemented in Skylords Reborn (for example, automatically rewarding the top X players on a leaderboard). 

So, long story short: is this realistic to be implemented in the near future? Sadly, No. 
Does it have potential: yes, but for now I would look more into a specific kind of event or challenge. I think it could be interesting to host a (community) event where you hand pick what cards are/arent legal and work from there. The downside is this is again a lot of manual preparation (both on the player and the host), including having to send replays manually, but currently its the only realistic approach. 

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On 1/25/2022 at 11:00 AM, Majora said:

... but fire loses eruption or sunstriders? Or a faction loses all its anti air units? 

You are right, that would not be much fun. So my approach would have to include a handful of 'real' core cards, that never rotate out. So not the entire twilight-edition, but rather specific cards like the mentioned eruption for PvP and T1 archers for every faction. Same approach could work for PvE.
But including this, I actually think it could work.

 

On 1/25/2022 at 11:00 AM, Majora said:

... it would probably result in less options, and forcing players into the faction that has the best cards left. 

Well this one would kinda be what I want 😄 yes it would result in less options - and thus in less strategies. And of course there would some colors turn out to be superior and some strategies prove to be the best/fastest - but it would take a little time until the players figure it out. And thats the fun part imo. Everyone starts from ground zero and tries stuff until he finds the perfect strategy that suits him to beat a certain map the fastest. Until the next rotation appears and something different turns out to be the best. 
Currently it´s somewhat similar - some strategies / cards are just superior, and thus 'force' players into picking those options for speedruns. With a rotation that would at least change every now and then.
But I´m actually not that much into speedrun actually, just looking for options to motivate players for the long term. A rotation-System could serve that purpose, introducing something 'new' (=different meta strategies) all the time.

 

Too bad that this would be so hard to implement tho. 

Edited by Xamos
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