Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Format, Variance, And Rarity

The design lead for the Transformers TCG posted this article on what the job is for common rarity cards.

No surprise; they're there to make limited (Turbo and Draft) environments work. That's just how TCGs are.

There is good content there, and I really do appreciate the lengths to which Wizards is going to to try and be transparent about how they build the game. Heck, I think there's interesting data there for anyone who plays a trading card game and is fascinated by the process.

However-and you had to know this was coming, right?-there is one big, big questionmark for me. From the article:
We feel Turbo is a strong selling point for our game that we’re starting to build sets towards it. If we can make the Turbo format more varied and fun without sacrificing the Constructed format (I think we can), it gives Transformers TCG an advantage over its competitors on the market. The common slot impacts Turbo the most so any innovations for that format go there.
So, there's just one problem.

Turbo isn't fun. I played two-and-a-half boxes of Turbo from Siege 1 and it wasn't fun. It wasn't fun in Rise of the Combiners, either-it was actually impossible to play, due to the Engima cards.

What was fun? Opening three packs, count stars only for characters, build the decks, go.

The reason Turbo isn't fun is because your battle deck is twelve cards. (Note: the link describing Turbo is incorrect, because the 7th battle card has been replaced by a second character card).

That just is not enough cards! Before your first turn even ends, you will have seen one third of your deck, at minimum, possibly half! That is in a set that has only 64 battle cards to begin with, so it's unlikely that you've got 12 unique cards, and the rarity is dispersed between both the battle cards AND the character cards, so the power levels are going to be wildly off. A rare character is far, far more powerful than a rare battle card and the rare battle card, if you get one, is unlikely to make it to your hand. Instead, it's far more likely you'll see the same common rarity cards flipped over and over.

If those common cards aren't helping you, that's incredibly discouraging, because you're going to see all of them, repeatedly.


By way of contrast, Draft has you making decks of 25 cards, and Constructed 40. Your first turns have you seeing just under 1/6th or 1/10th of your deck, which means there are a lot of surprises and choices left.

There isn't enough variance in your cards in Turbo to make play decisions matter. The power levels have been too flat, and with so few choices to make, games don't feel engaging. It is quite possible to have a bunch of cards in your hand that you cannot play, making your battle deck more and more consistent, meaning players already know the outcomes of the battle. That takes away from the most dynamic element of sealed!

However, at three booster packs, my experience was that games developed tension and my decisions mattered. I couldn't auto-play every character I got, which is good because it meant I was making choices about my game. Plus, the likelihood of my battle deck being blue-dominant and thus useless to me in a game that emphasizes attacking, is mitigated by the presence of those extra 6 cards, or by matching the best characters I could to the cards available to me!

That said, when I read Nagle's statement it's worth nothing he says, "If we can make the Turbo format more varied and fun without sacrificing the Constructed format (I think we can)".

So one of two things could be meant here: Either he knows that the format needs improvement and believes that they are making those improvements with Siege II, or he believes Turbo is fine as a format and they will continue to keep it 'varied and fun' as he groks those concepts.

I am really, really hoping for the former, not the latter. The Transformers TCG is a great deal of fun and I really do appreciate their attempt to keep the "on ramp" format as cheap as they can. As someone who is acutely aware of the costs of TCGs, I think they'd just do themselves a solid by recommending three packs to build the sealed deck instead of two. If I pay $8 and am miserable, or $12 and am entertained, then it's worth the four bucks to be happier. 

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