Why do that, they already have a game for that, it's called Smash Up.

1 minute ago, Inksplat said:

This method doesn’t work at all. Selling house packs with 12 random cards...how could you mix them with the other packs without making them the same back, which means there’s be no way to stop you from then buying multiple of the same faction packs and then swapping cards around. You’d literally just end up with a normal ccg?

Same way they do here. Each pack has a different back side and you can only have 3 different backsides in your deck.

Just now, Hellvlad said:

Same way they do here. Each pack has a different back side and you can only have 3 different backsides in your deck.

lol. So we’re just going to make marked cards a part of the game now? That’d be a pretty drastic change.

1 minute ago, Inksplat said:

This method doesn’t work at all. Selling house packs with 12 random cards...how could you mix them with the other packs without making them the same back, which means there’s be no way to stop you from then buying multiple of the same faction packs and then swapping cards around. You’d literally just end up with a normal ccg?

To be fair, the cards also have the name of your Avatar in the corner, so it would be technically possible with a generic back.

11 minutes ago, Inksplat said:

lol. So we’re just going to make marked cards a part of the game now? That’d be a pretty drastic change.

I don't see the problem. If it's all about adapt to an unknwn deck it won't tell you much. And considering the size of the deck after a few games you will be able to forsee what cards you will be drawing pretty easily,

15 hours ago, Radix2309 said:

I can go and build a magic deck for 10 dollars, and I will definitely be outclassed and be unable to do anything. Or I could get one of these and still have a shot.

These are procedurally generated. I am pretty sure they can hit a balance of characters to not be an autoloss. And they can create flatter powercurves based on rarity. There isn't going to be a common that is just better than otbers.

The idea that there will be decks that outclass others feels like a massive assumption considering we have less than 5% of the carss.

I have the feeling though, with randomly generated decks, that like 95% of decks will be garbage.

In duel CCGs, like MtG or Ashes, your deck really needs to have a certain goal in mind, some combo that drives the deck forward. Once in awhile, you'll pull a random deck that does that. But most of the time, the decks are just gonna be a bunch of cards thrown together that do nothing to help each other.

18 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

I have the feeling though, with randomly generated decks, that like 95% of decks will be garbage.

In duel CCGs, like MtG or Ashes, your deck really needs to have a certain goal in mind, some combo that drives the deck forward. Once in awhile, you'll pull a random deck that does that. But most of the time, the decks are just gonna be a bunch of cards thrown together that do nothing to help each other.

These aren't randomly generated, they are procedurally generated. When combo cards are in the pack, the algorithm makes sure other combo pieces are there. Like tribal effects.

It isn't truly random. Or else rarity wouldn't work.

I am honestly not worried about the business model. If I owned a game store I would be quite excited about this. Every tournament for this game would move product. When you purchase these from your local store, you are supporting their business. If you set up a tournament for $15 bucks that includes 1 new deck, admission and whatever swag that comes in a tournament you will probably profit. This is a great thing for game stores that often struggle because of Amazon and other big market sellers. Business model has alot of upside.

In the end, this game isn't going to be good for Min/maxers. You want to collect every single card and own all the noobs with your amazing crafted net deck then this game will not be up your alley and you should stay with MTG where the other try hard sweaties flock to FNM to crush other noobs with their $400 dollar net deck.

26 minutes ago, BuzzsawMF said:

I am honestly not worried about the business model. If I owned a game store I would be quite excited about this. Every tournament for this game would move product. When you purchase these from your local store, you are supporting their business. If you set up a tournament for $15 bucks that includes 1 new deck, admission and whatever swag that comes in a tournament you will probably profit. This is a great thing for game stores that often struggle because of Amazon and other big market sellers. Business model has alot of upside.

In the end, this game isn't going to be good for Min/maxers. You want to collect every single card and own all the noobs with your amazing crafted net deck then this game will not be up your alley and you should stay with MTG where the other try hard sweaties flock to FNM to crush other noobs with their $400 dollar net deck.

Or watch their expensive net decks get crushed by some 'low tier' deck that they never considered a threat until now. Happens so often for me, with my own deck crushing the same net deck build multiple rounds. I hope it can happen here too, where I just bring my own personal favorite archon from my collection, and win against those who call their decks 'top tier'.

18 hours ago, Krashwire said:

So this game has some neat ideas. However it stops there. Almost every aspect of this game seems to be flawed in some aspect. The biggest comes from the fact that you have almost no agency in what you play.

The first step that strikes me as just wrong is that you are most likely in any given deck to get a crappy deck. With random houses (colors), on top of random number of copies of random cards, most decks are going to be poor combinations that wont play nicely off each other.

The second is based on the fact that you will have a decent chance of opening what is essentially crap, you will have to make due. Sure you will probably be facing off against a significant amount of other crappy decks.

This leads to the third part. You will on occasion be facing off against a good deck. You will be outmatched. This is not due to any sort of player skill, just luck of the draw. That's great if you don't care about winning.

Now there is the rare scenario where you find a decent deck. Great! Prepare to have it banned. Wait you might say, what? Yup, banned.

Even worse that this... say you are a very skilled player. You manage to out play all the other crappy decks. You even manage to out play better decks because of skill. Guess what? Win too much and even that deck will be banned. Seriously? Banning a deck for player piloting it successfully? This simply screams cash grab. Oh, you are winning, well then you should pay us for a new deck since that one is too good...

I think the secondary market will help support this game, and the idea of local trading. If you don't get the 3 houses you want, trade with someone that wants the houses you have. I'm guessing online retailers will have partially opened decks where maybe you pay $15, but you get to choose the 3 houses for your deck. True, this eliminates the true unknown factor of the game, but if you really want to own a deck you choose, there will be options besides just strictly blind buying.

your second point of playing a crappy deck, maybe? Or maybe they will design more middle of the road cards so there isn't huge swings in card balance? I haven't seen all 350+ cards yet so I don't think its fair to assume there will be tons of crap cards.

the third point, you're also assuming that there will be massively powerful cards, instead of middle of the road cards. Since this game isn't about deck building, there is no need to push the collectibility of the game and encourage players to buy tons of cards to get the really good ones. I'm guessing part of the balance issues in collectible games is self inflicted by the manufacturers knowing they want better cards that players have to chase and spend more money on.

As far as having a deck banned... isn't that what you wanted from your third point? I don't know if you're concerned about a deck being banned or not banned. But lets go with you thinking both will happen and both are bad, I really think that if the manufacturer went to the length of banning an entire deck, it would have to be incredibly broken to the point that no errata could fix it. I can't possibly fathom a situation where no one in game production had the comment "what if there is a player that really likes there deck and they learn how to play it well and win a bunch of tournaments?" and now their system is just going to auto ban anyone who wins. Since these decks have a custom hero on the back of the deck, what if they create some hall of heroes where any deck that has won a significant number of tournaments enters in the hall, gets retired, and the player gets honor for their deck? Would it be too ridiculous if the tournaments prizes were a new deck since your deck might face retirement? And again, this is worst case scenario of FFG just banning decks that win instead of reviewing the deck contents to see if the card combo is creating some unfair balance in the game that they need to tweak.

Your last comment, if all I have to do is spend $10 for ALL OF THE PLAYERS OF THE GAME to know that MY DECK IS AMAZING AND RECEIVED BAN STATUS, yeah totally worth it. I'm guessing, and this is a wild guess, that if FFG went to the length to ban the entire deck and say that it is illegal in its entirety you can never again play it, first maybe they'd send another deck or compensate in another way.

The reality is that could you imagine the stock nightmare of stores receiving semi-blind boxes where the outside showed which of the 3 houses were included? There are 35 different boxes if there is a set order for the houses (mars always displays to the left of all other houses...) and there would be 210 different boxes if the order in which they display is random (Mars can appear to the left or right or Dis, etc). Store's displays would be getting messed up, if there was a more popular house then those would sell before the others and the store would sit on boxes of houses that were less favorable. Stores would try to order specific houses that were low stock. Players would get upset if their local store didn't get the houses they wanted. The printing for the boxes themselves would all be unique and increase production costs. Total blind boxes is absolutely in the favor of the store. If you really want to play this game and you really want to get the houses you prefer, I'd recommend just picking up a deck on the secondary market. It's hard to believe that this game would be the only competitive game with absolutely no secondary market. But really, if you want specific cards from Magic or any other CCG, you have to either buy a ton of blind boxes or look online for someone selling individual cards, this would be no different.

11 hours ago, Supertoe said:

I have the feeling though, with randomly generated decks, that like 95% of decks will be garbage.

In duel CCGs, like MtG or Ashes, your deck really needs to have a certain goal in mind, some combo that drives the deck forward. Once in awhile, you'll pull a random deck that does that. But most of the time, the decks are just gonna be a bunch of cards thrown together that do nothing to help each other.

I've seen this a lot since the game was announced, probably the most out of all the complaints.

From what I've read and heard, the decks aren't actually completely random, there is a procedure to how the decks are built.

I'm anticipating more of a bell curve of power in the decks that get generating, meaning the vast majority will be in the middle of the curve. Learning how to play each particular deck to it's fullest. Learning all the tricks and synergies contained in it. This will lead to more skill and tactics winning games over what's actually in the decks. At least in my opinion.

There will of course be the outliers, really good and really bad decks, but I don't see 95% of the decks being garbage, that's a doom and gloom way of looking at things.

On 8/2/2018 at 6:24 PM, Krashwire said:

So this game has some neat ideas. However it stops there. Almost every aspect of this game seems to be flawed in some aspect. The biggest comes from the fact that you have almost no agency in what you play.

The first step that strikes me as just wrong is that you are most likely in any given deck to get a crappy deck. With random houses (colors), on top of random number of copies of random cards, most decks are going to be poor combinations that wont play nicely off each other.

The second is based on the fact that you will have a decent chance of opening what is essentially crap, you will have to make due. Sure you will probably be facing off against a significant amount of other crappy decks.

This leads to the third part. You will on occasion be facing off against a good deck. You will be outmatched. This is not due to any sort of player skill, just luck of the draw. That's great if you don't care about winning.

Now there is the rare scenario where you find a decent deck. Great! Prepare to have it banned. Wait you might say, what? Yup, banned.

Even worse that this... say you are a very skilled player. You manage to out play all the other crappy decks. You even manage to out play better decks because of skill. Guess what? Win too much and even that deck will be banned. Seriously? Banning a deck for player piloting it successfully? This simply screams cash grab. Oh, you are winning, well then you should pay us for a new deck since that one is too good...

If anything this might be the only card game outside of the old standards that actually depends on skill. Hearthstone and Magic are both almost entirely about deep pockets and net decking.

Lol OP saying the game is flawed in every way before the game is even out. This has to be the same people that say some sort of combo is broken before it even played and then released its it's not.

And point 3. You face against a better deck. Oh my really, could this be why there is sidedeck in mtg or three deck elimination in headstone. I am sure there will be decks that counter each other out. Yes will expensive getting them but all hobbies are expensive.

All I hear is problem problem problem instead of finding good solutions.

The solution Christopher is actually to make the game digital.

If this was digital almost nothing about the model need change. The app itself could be a one time price. Then players could subscribe or pay for tournament tickets like in MTGonline.

This way you could just generate decks until you got one you were happy with. There could be a variety of formats that each have different rules, such as blind decks, everyone pick 3 houses and get a deck, bring your own deck from open play ect.

If the game were digital it wouldn't matter how many garbage decks you opened if you could just delete them and not be out $10 every time.

They could even still have the physical format, but instead of opening a random deck you then pick one that had been generated online and use that print on demand they have set up to print the decks people actually wanted to keep.

On 8/3/2018 at 11:49 AM, BuzzsawMF said:

I am honestly not worried about the business model. If I owned a game store I would be quite excited about this. Every tournament for this game would move product. When you purchase these from your local store, you are supporting their business. If you set up a tournament for $15 bucks that includes 1 new deck, admission and whatever swag that comes in a tournament you will probably profit. This is a great thing for game stores that often struggle because of Amazon and other big market sellers. Business model has alot of upside.

In the end, this game isn't going to be good for Min/maxers. You want to collect every single card and own all the noobs with your amazing crafted net deck then this game will not be up your alley and you should stay with MTG where the other try hard sweaties flock to FNM to crush other noobs with their $400 dollar net deck.

Seeing how adept FFG is at OP, maybe there will be alt art singles that you can swap out assuming you have the correct deck. Or sleeves. Unless more of the product (or $$$) is the swag, there is no swag

On 8/3/2018 at 12:19 PM, RedMageStatscowski said:

Or watch their expensive net decks get crushed by some 'low tier' deck that they never considered a threat until now. Happens so often for me, with my own deck crushing the same net deck build multiple rounds. I hope it can happen here too, where I just bring my own personal favorite archon from my collection, and win against those who call their decks 'top tier'.

Congratulations for knowing how to tech for a meta?

2 hours ago, Krashwire said:

If the game were digital it wouldn't matter how many garbage decks you opened if you could just delete them and not be out $10 every time

What makes u think that way? What would stop anyone for opening one deck after another then (except from time)?

--

My opinion:

People are starting looking for problems when game isn't even out. With 350 cards it isn't very hard to try to balance the whole set to avoid some freaky combos. And if anything will be too broken - it will get banned (and that kind of stuff also happens to single cards in other games). Ok, there will be possibly some decks better than the others but I think that desingers took it into accout - that's what the banning part is all about. They won't ban good deck - only insanely good decks that they didn't foresee. If we theoretically assume that normal deck's strenght is "1.0" and there will be strenght variations let's say from "0.9" - "1.1" with banning decks that are far above, we will have simillar power level. If designers accomplish that - it will be awesome.

I have read the instructions and Garfield seems to try to remove frustrating issues that can be found in collectible card games. There will be no infinity locks because u can use the same effect only couple of times, there will be no mill decks playing different game cause your discard will go back into your deck if you run out of cards, there will be no mana costs (and thus no problems with two cards with the same effect and different costs), there will be no OTK/FTK because you can only get one key per regardless of number of embers u gathered etc. There will be probalbly more decisions (like choosing color for the turn or sequence of playing your creatures etc) and with pregenerated deck probably not focused on one strategy, so - more decisions implies more skill depending game.

I think we should take this game as it is - with it's humour and design looks like it has been made for people who want to play and enjoy the game. But it won't suit people that are super combo meta game abusers who would like to break the game itself to win. And I am fine with that. Less toxic people in game - better for whole community.

Also this model is something new and exciting. Maybe it won't be as good as I assume but it can be improved in future sets or set new directions for designing card games. We live in modern times and yet we cling to medieval card games and the way they work. Let's wait and give something new a try instead of searching for issues from the very beginning.

I think this format actually rewards skill.

Due to the small cardpool the designers don't have to invent a lot of crud cards to fill all those boosterpacks with each rotation. Each card could actually be good.

I see this as a computer generating a deck from a finely honed cube. Instead of a load of dead commons

The relative power levels of the generated decks should be quite close so skill will actually count for something.

There is some information about the procedural generation of deck on Boardgame geek: the thread is here: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2036853/deck-construction-algorithm-balance and initiated by Richard Garfield.

Here is a copy of the initial post of Mr. Garfield:

" I can't go into details, but the construction algorithm does reject decks and do small amounts of construction. In balancing the goals of variety against playability (both too powerful and too weak) we tried to cut as few decks as possible, but we did cut some. More often than too powerful or too weak was 'not fun', it is not fun to get a card that refers to Robots and then have no robots in your deck - or even just have one.

There absolutely will be a range of powers with the decks, it would be arrogant to think we could identify algorithmically true power of a deck - and it would undermine one of the things I love most about games - that they are bigger than the designer - the players get better than the designers, and later players get better than earlier players. This means 'balance' is always a moving target.

A couple examples to illustrate that - in very early magic there was a powerful deck engine based on a card Necropotence - and lots of call that it get banned. We chose not to and the world championship was very exciting because some players brought out a secret weapon - the Stasis Deck - which disrupted the status quo. We as designers did not know there was a solution, but we knew that games are very very complex, and we didn't want to deprive the players the ultimate achievement of solving that problem.

A second illustration comes from an electronic game I worked on, Spectromancer. In that there were classes you bought and one free class - cleric. There were many complaints that cleric was the worst class - which we were pretty sure wasn't true, but the natural result of it being free. We chose that character to be free not because it was weak but because it was flexible and showed the variety the game offered. We did an analysis and found that indeed for beginners Cleric was slightly underpowered, for Intermediate it was quite underpowered and for expert it was actually a favored deck. In retrospect this was predictable - flexibility is almost always skill testing, and allows players to make bad decisions as well as good. Similarly a deck coveted by beginners - the Necromancer - was powerful against beginners and intermediates but underpowered against experienced players. Experts knew how to avoid the traps the Necromancer laid.

There is no one balance - intermediates and beginners are all players as well, and experts today become outdated tomorrow.

Instead of the goal to make decks fair, I took the goal as making as many decks as possible playable and fun against each other - meaning that of the three major factors in a matchup - player skill, deck quality, and variance - deck quality rarely dominates (meaning regardless of skill or luck your chances to win against it are minimal). And most matchups it will be a long time before the favored deck is known and the advantage should be small.

As players get better at evaluating the deck powers there are many tools for making games fair - the handicapping system of chains is one, but switching decks and for very experienced players - bidding chains are others.

Personally - my son and I (he is a very good player) like to take underperforming decks and try to beat each other with it. It is sometimes tough but we find a lot of glory to taking down a more powerful deck, and sometimes the techniques used can change the relative performance. If we wanted to play 'fair' we would bid - or choose two decks that are close in performance, which we do sometimes as well."

It seems to me that card games in general offer multiple skills that players can attempt to master, deck building and play skill being two of the most important each having a subset of skills. A player’s skill in a draft format is not necessarily the same as their skill level in a constructed format or a sealed format. The fact that the skill of deck construction is not required for Keyforge does not mean that it punishes skill. It means that players can focus on developing the skill of playing their preferred deck(s).

This thread and the multiple others like it seem to work on the assumption that the game is going to favor the luck of purchasing a “better” deck than your opponent as opposed to playing your deck better than your opponent plays theirs. If this assumption is correct the game will likely fail. However, if player skill is more valuable than a lucky deck purchase then the game may very well be incredibly successful. The truth of the matter is that we will not know how things are going to turn out until months after the game is released if not a year or more.

On 8/4/2018 at 7:59 PM, Raviael said:

I think we should take this game as it is - with it's humour and design looks like it has been made for people who want to play and enjoy the game. But it won't suit people that are super combo meta game abusers who would like to break the game itself to win. And I am fine with that. Less toxic people in game - better for whole community.

This is why I'm excited about the game. I only play CCG's casually with friends and non of us are big on deck building, I personally find it a chore and only do it for Destiny because it's Star Wars. When we play Pokemon we always play theme decks or when we want more of a challenge we'll play battle or championship decks. So having another game where we can start playing straight away with no beck building is a huge advantage, then once a deck starts to get a bit stale just buy a new one, same as we do with Pokemon, but with this there are no end to the number of decks available, not just the limited number that get released per set .

On ‎8‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 7:41 PM, Krashwire said:

The solution Christopher is actually to make the game digital.

If this was digital almost nothing about the model need change. The app itself could be a one time price. Then players could subscribe or pay for tournament tickets like in MTGonline.

This way you could just generate decks until you got one you were happy with. There could be a variety of formats that each have different rules, such as blind decks, everyone pick 3 houses and get a deck, bring your own deck from open play ect.

If the game were digital it wouldn't matter how many garbage decks you opened if you could just delete them and not be out $10 every time.

They could even still have the physical format, but instead of opening a random deck you then pick one that had been generated online and use that print on demand they have set up to print the decks people actually wanted to keep.

LOL the game isn't out yet and there's already a deck on Tabletop simulator

That is of no surprise. I suspect once people have the full set of images and some deck lists TT sim will be an excellent way to try this game and not have to pull the $10 slot machine handle just to try it out... plus this will be a great way to experiment with different house combos, again, without all the slot machine/loot box nonsense.

5 hours ago, Krashwire said:

That is of no surprise. I suspect once people have the full set of images and some deck lists TT sim will be an excellent way to try this game and not have to pull the $10 slot machine handle just to try it out... plus this will be a great way to experiment with different house combos, again, without all the slot machine/loot box nonsense.

Having no experience with TTP, but: could you alter the card backs so it's possible to "deckbuild"?

22 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

Having no experience with TTP, but: could you alter the card backs so it's possible to "deckbuild"?

Shouldn't be a problem no. Im sure some industrious person could whip up a randomized deck script for it aswell.

Yes, you could.