New Game Mode Idea - Planar Conquest

[drdev]

So I've been itching to work on a new game mode that's exclusive to the mobile game (at least initially). I want it to be different than quest mode yet still offer a sense of adventure and progress. I also want it to capture some of what I loved about the original Shandalar game yet be updated to include more recent sets.

My current idea is to make a hexagon tile based game where you'd start out on a Magic plane (ex. Shandalar, Mirrodin, Ravnica) with the goal to conquer the plane. The plane would be divided into regions for the 5 colors of Magic, and each region would perhaps be further divided by the rarities of Magic, with Black bordered (Commons) tiles being easily accessible from your starting position, Silver bordered (Uncommon) tiles requiring you to first conquer some Black bordered tiles to reach, and Gold bordered (Rare) tiles requiring you to first conquer some Silver bordered tiles to reach. Your hero could move to any adjacent hexagon tile and attempt to conquer that tile by facing an opponent in a game (or match) of Magic, where that opponent's deck is determined based on the type of tile. When you conquer a tile by winning that game/match, you would unlock a certain number of cards from sets that take place in the current plane, with color and rarity determined by the type of tile. Those cards could then be used to enhance your deck.

To make things more interesting, you'd have the ability to travel to new planes as soon as you conquer a certain percentage of the current plane or alternatively reach designated tiles on the edge of the map. The end goal of the game would be to conquer all the planes and unlock every Magic card in Forge.

Another twist to this game mode idea is to mix in the popular Commander format by having your hero be a chosen legendary creature from your starting plane, and then your deck would be a commander deck with that creature as your general and your available cards being restricted accordingly. You'd then randomly face other legendary creatures as you conquer a plane, and after winning against those opponents those legends would offer to join you in your conquest, and you'd be able to use your unlocked cards to enhance the deck they played against you, and you could then move them around the map as another hero to conquer other areas or travel to new planes.

I'm also thinking of having the tiles apply certain static bonuses based on their color, such as Forest tiles giving all green creatures +1/+1. This will make conquering a color tile not present in your deck more difficult, while also providing incentive to not just play the same deck everywhere. I was also thinking of working Planechase cards into this somehow since that seems appropriate, though I'm not sure how at this moment.

I've actually already spent some time designing the 5 color tiles for the game. Here's a sneak peak:

Does this game mode idea sound interesting to people? I'd like some design input before I go and implement the whole thing. Particularly in terms of scaling the difficulty appropriately and ensuring the conquest stays interesting throughout. Also, alternative name suggestions to "Planar Conquest" are welcome if you have other ideas.

Thanks.
-Dan

[Marek14]

I had been thinking about similar projects for a long time, so I'll offer my input.

First of all, Commander would be great as an option, but I wouldn't use it as a default mode. You'd have to build your first deck from around 60-70 singleton cards plus basic lands, and that might be too big a barrier for casual player to do just before he starts playing.

Now, instead of having same tiles of different rarities, how about using tiles based on nonbasic lands as well? When you go to Plains tile, you'll face a white deck, for example. But when you go to a rare Adarkar Wastes tile, you'll go against a WU deck with improved cards. This could tell an interesting story. For example, the "bands with others" cycle from Legends would not have a battle (since they don't produce mana), but you would get some free cards of legendary creatures of appropriate color. Ancient Tomb, since it produces 2 mana, would face you against 2 opponents at once. Maze of Ith, when entered, would be conquered with 50% chance, but if not conquered, it would teleport you to a random place on map. Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth would give every tile on map a chance to produce black encounter until conquered. Graven Cairns, when encountered in Time Spiral block, would have a small chance to warp you to Shadowmoor.
You could have generic colorless/multicolor pics for these nonbasic lands -- as long as the player can get precise information about what they are before he lands there, it's good.

Next, let's explore what the planes would actually mean here. Would a Ravnica plane contain cards from both blocks right from start? Or would both Ravnicas be separate block planes?

I'd suggest:
A block plane for each block. They would start with first set of the block, and when you collect certain percentage of cards, they "advance", unlocking second set, and eventually the third. The unlock will open a new part of the map - new lands from second/third sets would only appear in those new parts.
In case of Alara, the first map would be a set of five unconnected areas corresponding to the sub-planes, unlocking Conflux would open "bridges" between those maps, and unlocking Alara Reborn would fuse the whole map into one big block including the central "Maelstrom" area.
For Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, the Lorwyn plane would be completed after unlocking Morningtide, and a special central "Aurora" tile would appear. Conquering this tile (which would have a random opponent from Shadowmoor/Eventide) will switch the plane to Shadowmoor. After unlocking Eventide, the Aurora will be once again accessible (this time with Lorwyn/Morningtide opponent), and from that point on you could switch the planes by conquering Aurora at any time. Lorwyn and Shadowmoor would have the same shape and any tile that would be basic land in both planes would be forced to be the same kind of basic land.
Same "basic land structure" would also connect Ravnica/Return to Ravnica and Mirrodin/Scars of Mirrodin.
The Time Spiral block plane could work as a "hub" of sorts with gateways to various other realms, both past and future. It would be possible to encounter something totally out of sync in there, opponents from previous times, for example. After unlocking Planar Chaos, you could encounter "alternate" decks. For example, an Unlimited-era deck containing Prodigal Pyromancer, from a world where it always existed instead of Prodigal Sorcerer. Future Sight would be more tricky since some of the later blocks are not really hinted in there and some have undergone significant changes. Sarcomite Myr, for example, was originally meant to be from Scars of Mirrodin block, but when that block actually came, a simple colored artifact no longer fit in -- so maybe you could encounter a Scars of Mirrodin-based deck from alternate future where Sarcomite Myr was printed there...
Theros would have a separate Nyx area with a long bridge leading there. The first part of bridge would appear after unlocking Born of the Gods and the second part and Nyx itself after unlocking Journey into Nyx.
Dominaria is one very large plane containing many expansions from various times. Most of them would be represented by their own planes, but you could have Odyssey and Onslaught blocks represented by the same plane where Odyssey is southern part and Onslaught the northern (or was it the other way around?).
Coldsnap would be third expansion of Ice Age plane, but to unlock it, you'd need a condition that could be only met on Ravnica plane, since it was printed between Ravnica and Time Spiral.

Apart from the block planes, there would be the planes corresponding to Core sets. Those are outside of block structure, so they could be concepted as a "tower" of planes or a dungeon. Each Core set plane contains a tile with portal to past (previous set) and future (next set) and you have to unlock certain percentage of cards to open them. Encountering the portal will lead to a fight against something from the previous/next set, similar to the Aurora.

Finally, Magic has products that don't really fit anywhere. Duel decks, with their alternate arts and such, could be a low-chance encounters in Core Sets, or, in case of planeswalker Duel Decks, anywhere at all. Others, like Commander worlds, a micro-plane containing the old promo cards, or the From the Vault sets, could be "Parasite planes" that would appear at the edge of the map with some chance, and would disappear when you leave the map (similar to pirates in Disgaea games).

For static bonuses, this is tricky. I don't think you'd want the bonuses to be omnipresent so there would be no "normal" games to be played. One option would be to make use of Vanguard effects or even permanent planes (imagine a Planechase deck formed from a single type of plane), or having opponent start with a specific card a la dungeons in Shandalar. The type and frequencies of possible effects are important.

[rikimbo]

You're the man, drdev. You've certainly putting a lot on your plate, with this and the android build. I hope someone will be able to port this over to the desktop version as you are working on it, because I'd love it on there, too!

As a suggestion to get started, I'd say even just getting the world map implemented with the tiles influencing the available duels, the rewards, and the shop inventory would be a great start that also stands up on its own. If that's all it ever supported, I would still play it a ton.

Here's a design suggestion: to determine the colors of cards and duels available at a particular tile, you could use a density model. Here's what I mean: The type of the tile itself would have the strongest influence. Next, the 6 tiles directly adjacent to it would have equal but lesser influence, followed by tiles distance 2 away, etc. This would make traveling deep into a cluster of forests, for example, yield the most green-biased distributions. That way, you could decide where to travel on a larger scale based on what rewards you're after.

EDIT: To incorporate difficulty, you could associate a difficulty with each tile, and distribute them such that the easy ones are most common near the start location, and the harder ones become less sparse the further out you go from where you started. You could use a probability distribution based on the distance from the center tile in order to roll the difficulties of each tile on world generation. A nice thing is that this opens up some settings for user customization: for a harder challenge, the density of harder matches can increase quicker. I think this could be done with "threshold" distances for each difficulty level, kind of like the win counts we have for difficulty levels now. These would be softer boundaries, though.

[moomarc]

Just a quick idea for starting the game as fast as possible - why not have the player pick a starting colour or two, then use the current commander deck generator to build a basic starting deck that can be player straight away? Add 2 boosters to that starting pool that they can use to augment their deck and voila! Shouldn't need much tweaking to limit the commander deck generator to a particular plane (and by default I set it at either 2 or three colours, can't remember offhand, but that's also an easy fix).

Just my two cents. Sounds like a great mode though.

[drdev]

Just a quick idea for starting the game as fast as possible - why not have the player pick a starting colour or two, then use the current commander deck generator to build a basic starting deck that can be player straight away? Add 2 boosters to that starting pool that they can use to augment their deck and voila! Shouldn't need much tweaking to limit the commander deck generator to a particular plane (and by default I set it at either 2 or three colours, can't remember offhand, but that's also an easy fix).

Just my two cents. Sounds like a great mode though.

That was basically my idea, though I also would want to offer the choice of commander in addition to just offering a choice of color. I'd just need to tweak the generator to accept a restricted card pool for the current plane as well as a specified commander.

[serrasmurf]

Hi Dan,
Great that you start working on “campaign mode”! I think everybody will have their ideas about that and will be happy with whatever you’ll come up with. You’ve also probably seen a lot of older forum posts about this (like headrock).

I’ll approach your ideas from my user perspective: I start playing your game mode, how can that be a fun, challenging experience, for at least 10 gaming hours? It is a strategy layer, so there are objectives and I have to make interesting strategic choices to reach them.

Objectives:
You mentioned:
- Conquer plane(s) : cool
- Collect every card on plane/forge : very hard! Maybe a reward for conquering the plane?
You could add some other objectives, whether as “end-objectives” or as conditions, by having an underlying campaign (where you have to complete for example challenges & tournaments which develops you as a character)
Here my 2 cents:
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1516&start=1485#p154367
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1516&p=107768&hilit=vision#p107768

So I have these objectives and am on your hectagonal plane.
What are my strategic choices?
- My starting pool has a lot of good green, I need more, lets’go deep into the woods: can I grind matches or am I done when I’ve conquered the green tiles?
- My good green deck will have trouble with UW control, I don’t want to go in that direction until my deck is more resilient
- I need black sideboard cards for opponent X, let’s conquer some swamps
- I have no green cards, want to start conquering green tiles where all green creatures get +1/+1. I am seriously disadvantaged. I will make sure I have a truckload of removal, and don’t expect to develop a new green deck that is good enough to oppose the good oppoents and benefit from the bonus
- As a restriction it is maybe more interesting that you can’t play certain cards, for example when you play in the woods you cannot play enemy colours of green (black, blue). Otherwise it will be to easy to make 1 good control deck and run over all the opponents
- i ve conquered green, black and red: lets finish off white and red!
This would be unbalanced, the last parts would mostly be easy and boring
. Game balance and map design should make users explore the (un)common tiles first before being able to defeat the toughest opponents. you have to explore the plane, somtimes having to conquer a tough uncommon tile to reach some common tiles behind it that you need.

From another angle: what strategic choices do I have now in Quest mode and how are they translated/ improved by a proper layer:
- I choose an opponent (from the 3 that Forge offers me) and choose the one I can beat: in your plane you know the colour(s) of the enemy
- I choose the opponent who has cards I want to win by ante: choose a card fro their decks (damn, it's hard to come up with something that wasn't already in shandalar
- All the bazaar items: hidden treasures/rewards/ limitedly available (specific plane pets)
- I travel to another plane to get more cards: what costs/restrictions do you want set for travelling and use of cards from other planes?

Small remarks:
I would choose the plane to contain everything on the plane (all ravnica sets on this plane)
the starting point could then be in the old setting and you’ll conquer yourself to the latest ravnica additions
But that is not so elegant, preferably you want to mimic/ use the original ravnica map and ravnica timeline, then you have to use “game time” to introduce the more recent ravnica sets and opponents

I like the commander idea, not sure if small worlds like mirrodin of ravnica have anough depth to keep deck development interesting for a longer period.

Hope you can come up with something that will work also well in the colourless plane of mirrodin and the dual-coloured guild shenanigans on the plane iof ravnica

Other (shandalar) ideas:
- Your minimum deck size increases with power level (easy: 40, medium: 50, hard: 60): that will make deck development interesting for a longer time
- You have to win rarity slots and slots for cards from other planes
- Game information that will help you make choices (pay to see an opponents decklist)
- The opponent that plays your deck (the mirror): duel decks
- Forge knows your deck value, it could use that information to make it more difficult (or punish you from smashing thise poor cheap enemies)

But probably simplicity is the key!
Good luck

[drdev]

So I've made some significant progress on this, though the format has evolved a bit. See this post for more details:

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=14534&start=945#p170037