Suggestions for Quest mode

[anikitin]

First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely love Forge, especially the Quest mode. The amount of cards is mind-blowing and the speed with which it increases is amazing. I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this great project.
Nevertheless, the abundance of cards has a drawback for Quest mode. There are many cards in MtG which are useless or only good for a certain number of decks. That said, if you start a Quest with a certain deck in mind, most cards you encounter are useless and prevent you from getting the cards you need. It is frustrating when you already have a nice deck that has a fighting chance, but it is an absolute disaster when you start out and are struggling to build a deck that at is at least ABLE to win. I often find myself restarting the Quest just to get a decent setup, because most of the time the card sets you get are unplayable (i.e. they have almost 0% chance of winning against any of the AI decks).
What I am asking is this: is there some way we could limit the card pool available for quest? I'm not a programmer myself but, seeing how a text file is used to tell the program where to look for card pics, maybe a text file could be used to allow users to select the cards they want to get in Quest.
For example, quest_cards.txt which lists all cards in alphabetic order. If you don't want a certain card to appear in your Quest, delete its name from the list. To put it back, type the name back.
Or, at the very least, we could get a pop-up window at the start of Quest asking what colors we need. For instance, if I seek to build a UB milling deck, I have no need for W,G and R cards. So I choose UBC and all the cards I get in Quest will be blue, black or colorless.
What do you guys think?

[Chris H.]

I believe that you can go into the constructed mode deck editor and create a deck with the cards that you want to add to your pool of cards in quest mode. Save the deck and then export it as a .deck file.

Import this deck into the quest mode deck editor and I think that these cards will then be added to your card pool. I would be very careful not to add too many premium cards as this could ruin what little play balance there might be to start with.

And any cards you get that you do not want can be sold at the card shop for credits. These credits can then be spent buying the cards that interest you the most.

[anikitin]

Well, the problem is, when going after a specific deck, you find yourself "recycling" cards too much. Basically, if you're going after a 2-color deck with possible addition of colorless cards, the other 3 colors are automatically marked as "junk". Assuming each color has approximately the same number of cards, you've got 3/6 of all cards automatically marked as "junk". This means that every second card you get as a prize as well as half of what the shop offers you is useless. A bit too much, don't you think?
Also, I think it would be nice to limit the randomness of the shop a bit. I mean, randomness is great but sometimes you just can't get anything useful there. Maybe make it so that the most powerful/expensive spells are always on display? I mean, it wouldn't hurt the balance too much if you had the opportunity to buy Black Lotus or Moxen any time you want? You'd still need to get the 20 or 80 grand needed to buy them. But the point is, once you've earned enough, you wanna enhance your deck immediately, not wait 20-30 games before Lady Luck finally decides to help you.
Thanks for your suggestion about deck import, I'll definitely try it. However, it will greatly take away from the experience. Despite all the bad stuff I was saying about random, the reason I play Quest is because it is random. If I can get half a deck from the start, why not get the whole deck? And if I can get the whole deck, why play Quest at all?

[Chris H.]

Currently, the user can import a few desired cards via a .deck file. There is also a quest.preferences file that can be edited. The quest mode until recently would only used cards named in the three rarity files located in the quest folder. This would allow people to create a sort of cube set for quest mode.

The devs have a few plans that could improve quest mode at some point in the future. Imagine a cube set based on a block of cards. It might be possible at some point. It would be nice to give people the ability to create cube sets for quest mode again.

[anikitin]

Yes, that would be awesome. However, it would probably require a cube set of opponents, too. Some blocks are simply way better than others. For instance, Portal deck would probably stand no chance against a Mirrodin AI - the cards are simply way cheaper and more powerful.

[anikitin]

So, is it possible to limit the card pool in the current version? There are 3 txt files in the /res folder (rare, common and uncommon) which contain lists of card names. Would deleting a card from that list prevent the card from popping in my quest? And wouldn't that cause bugs (say, my opponent's deck contains a deleted card)?

[Chris H.]

The three rarity files in the /res/ and /res/quest/ folder are no longer used by forge, they need to be deleted. The only way to remove cards from the quest mode card pool at this time is to edit the card text files themselves.

When we open the card Abandoned Outpost in a text editor this is what we see:

Name:Abandoned Outpost
ManaCost:no cost
Types:Land
Text:no text
K:tap: add W
K:tap, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add W to your mana pool.
K:tap, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add U to your mana pool.
K:tap, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add B to your mana pool.
K:tap, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add R to your mana pool.
K:tap, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add G to your mana pool.
K:CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped.
SVar:Rarity:Common
SVar:Picture:http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/general/abandoned_outpost.jpg
SetInfo:ODY|Common|http://magiccards.info/scans/en/od/312.jpg
End

If we change this line "SVar:Rarity:Common" to read "SVar:Rarity:" instead, then this card will no longer appear in quest mode. Note that this is a lot of work. Ugh!

The devs are aware of this situation and would like to address it at some point. Having a list of cards that are included in quest mode might be the best solution. We would need some easy way for the user base to select which cards to include via an editor. This editor should probably be a part of the forge application.

It would still be up to each user to decide whether or not to create this listing for their own use. I am not sure how many people would make use of such a feature. It would be a nice feature to add to forge at some point.

Oh, and another way to handle blocks of cards. Imagine that at times during your quest you could travel to an area where the booster sets that you won would be limited to a specific block or set of cards. Might as well quest in the Revised/Beta area until you win a mox or two.

[DennisBergkamp]

Yes, this is something I'd love to add to the Shandalar part... Being able to buy boosters of a certain expansion (of course an Alpha or Beta booster would be a lot more expensive than other boosters).

[anikitin]

Chris, I wonder: will deleting the cards using the method you described will cause bugs in situations where the opponent has cards that I deleted?

[Chris H.]

Chris, I wonder: will deleting the cards using the method you described will cause bugs in situations where the opponent has cards that I deleted?

`
Do not remove or delete the actual card txt files, keep them in the /res/cardsfolder/. Deleting or removing the actual card txt files will cause problems.

Editing the line with the SVar:Rarity should be safe. It should also be safe to comment out this SVar. Using the example form the previous message, you can add the pound sign before the start of the SVar and forge will recognize this as a comment in the file and will not assign a rarity to the card.

A commented-out rarity would look like this:

#SVar:Rarity:Common

Commenting-out the rarity might be the best way to handle this situation. This way you can easily go back and remove the pound sign if you decide to re-add a card back into the card pool.

[anikitin]

Thanks Chris, gonna go get rid of some particularly useless cards and start a new quest. Maybe this time I can complete my Mox Affinity =)
By the way, does it only prevent the card from being given as a prize, or does it prevent it from appearing in the shop as well?

[timmermac]

If there's a particular deck you're trying to get, there is a much easier way to get it. Just use the main deck editor outside of quest mode to create the deck, save it, then export it as a .deck file. Then, in the quest mode deck editor, import the .deck file and save the deck.

[Chris H.]

Thanks Chris, gonna go get rid of some particularly useless cards and start a new quest. Maybe this time I can complete my Mox Affinity =)
By the way, does it only prevent the card from being given as a prize, or does it prevent it from appearing in the shop as well?

`
Some time has passed since I last looked at that portion of the code base. As I remember it, the initial card pool, the booster packs that are won, and the random rares can only come from a list of cards that have a rarity value.

I think that the card shop builds a collection of cards for sale from the same list of cards with a rarity value. Commenting out the rarity value for a card should have the same effect on the card shop. And any card(s) won during a fantasy special quest must come from a list of cards with a rarity value.

[anikitin]

I tried to delete rarity value completely (leaving the string in the form SVar.Rarity) and it caused the entire database vanish to disappear from deck editor, so that's not the way to do it.
I'm currently trying to switch rarity values for different cards and I have a question: how does rarity work? Is it just a chance that the card will appear, or is it more complicated than that (like, for example, when card shop offers you 50 cards, maybe it actually offers you a fixed amount of commons, uncommons and rares, and randomness only affects choice within those amounts)?

[Chris H.]

The quest.preferences file contains some info related to rarity. There are some numbers that set specific limits to the number of commons, uncommons and rares that appear in the starting card pool and in the booster packs that are won.

Code: Select all

difficultyString=Easy,Normal,Hard,Very Hard
# Num of Wins for each Difficulty to gain a Booster, Rank, Duel vs Tougher AI Decks
winsForBooster=1,1,2,2
winsForRankIncrease=3,4,5,6
winsForMediumAI=10,9,8,7
winsForHardAI=20,18,16,14
# When starting a quest this is how much of each type you'll start with. Plus your starting Credits.
startingBasicLand=20
startingSnowBasicLand=20
startingCommons=45,40,40,40
startingUncommons=20,15,15,15
startingRares=10,10,10,10
startingCredits=250
# When winning a booster pack, this is what you'll expect to see in a pack.
boosterPackCommon=7
boosterPackUncommon=3
boosterPackRare=1
# Match rewards that are used by the quest system
matchRewardBase=10
matchRewardTotalWins=0.3
matchRewardNoLosses=10
matchRewardPoisonWinBonus=50
matchRewardMilledWinBonus=40
matchRewardAltWinBonus=100
matchRewardWinOnFirstTurn=1500
matchRewardWinByTurnFive=250
matchRewardWinByTurnTen=50
matchRewardWinByTurnFifteen=5
matchRewardMullToZero=500