DotP 2012 and Forge

[Accountancy]

I posted this on my blog today about Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012:
Is it just me or is this game not actually very good? I find some of the rules enforcement really counter-intuitive and the lack of ability to tap lands the way I want just completely screws over my turns.
My worst experience was completing an archenemy campaign challenge and there was a clear route to victory using two burn spells to kill a creature and using another spell to pump my allies creature, but it just kept tapping my lands in a way that I couldn’t do this, instead it forced me to jump through all sorts of dumb card interaction loops to kill the opponent.
And most of all I can’t believe the poor quality of the graphics as the edges of cards are consistently blocky.
All-in-all I think for most of my AI magic, I’ll keep playing Forge, probably the simplest and best single-player magic game available. Completely free, more than 8000 cards implemented and it has some of the best rules enforcement. While occasionally buggy, the developers are always on the forum and willing to fix things for the next update.
http://confessionsofapuzzledwizard.tumb ... -dotp-2012

[mtgrares]

It is interesting that you enjoy Forge more than DotP. When I first heard about DotP I thought that it would kill Forge but it didn't. (Forge has the whole "I'm cool since I'm an indie game" going for it.)

[timmermac]

I tried a demo of Planeswalkers once, and I wasn't impressed. I like having Forge's greater cardpool and the freedom to make any deck I feel like making. Slivers FTW!

[Chris H.]

I recently got a Steam account for my Mac. Unfortunately, it looks like DotP is currently Windows only.

Then again, I suspect that DotP might not be able to hod my interest unlike Forge.

[Accountancy]

The fact that DotP doesn't let you tap your own lands and sometimes even target your own spells just ruins it. It's not magic, it's a gimicky video game.

[Nordos]

Is DotP 2012 a different release then the one which came out some time ago? Oh, come on, DotP was already lame ~.~ How could they even create another similar game? :S

When I bought DotP, I thought it was something like the old game (with Shandalar) - and it was something totally different. No option to make an own deck?! WTF! You have to keep old cards in the deck? Oh, c'mon! And you couldnt play against a random enemy? Yehaaa -_-

Nah, Forge is a lot better, if the game mechanics didn't change much from DotP to DotP 2012.
[BTW, why is it named 2012?! o.O)

[Hellfish]

To coincide with M12's release.

I think both games look really cool, if only for the challenge mode. The thing that's stopping me from buying them is that I downloaded the demo for the first one and all I got was a messagebox saying my graphics card was too shit. Now, I put it to you, how graphically demanding can/should a card game be?

[DennisBergkamp]

In a way, I do enjoy playing the new DotP 2012, the things going for it mainly are a very slick (albeit a bit slow) interface, good AI which actually does some pretty smart stuff sometimes, and a campaign with unlockable cards. It's also a lot less buggy than Forge, I'm sure.

However, I don't know why they went the preconstructed deck route, plus with all of the resources they have, they should've made something like Shandalar where the player also just has complete freedom of whatever deck he wants to create from boosters.

[friarsol]

I think it's a basic Game Design issue. DoTP (and 2012) are designed as a starter tool to get new Players into Magic. It has all the bits and pieces of real magic, except for Advanced Deck Building. The tutorial is excellent, the card variation is solid, the AI is strong enough. It's definitely a turn off for skilled players not being able to finetune a deck or tap the right mana to be able to activate a second ability. But the advantage gained by speeding up the game and automating away all the "boring" parts is a big selling point.

I think it's doing exactly what it's designed to. And for 10 bucks? I'm sure plenty of people will think "Oh lemme give this game a shot" or "I used to play when I was a kid" and would stumble at the blocks of many of intricacies you take for granted.

[DennisBergkamp]

Yup, I grabbed it instantly because of the low price, it's just fun to play a game here and there and improve one of the decks in the process.

[Accountancy]

I can see the appeal for new players but it seems marketed very strongly to existing players which confuses me as it doesn't work the way it should if you understand most rules well enough.

[Kersed]

I bought it the first day it was out on the XBOX 360 because I had a lot of fun playing the first DotP with my friends. Is it just me, or does DotP 2012 play a lot slower? Like as far as the way the decks are built. It seems like the power level for each deck was toned down considerably. I assume this was done to make Archenemy playable, but still.

One last thing, how annoying is it that the UG deck has 25 lands, even though more than half of its spells are ramp spells? It's awesome that you can now add/remove all cards from your deck, now they just need to allow us to edit our land count.

[Hellfish]

Seriously? You can add/remove cards except lands? You know, I used to think that Patrick Buckland and his team were clever after reading his AI articles.Not anymore.

[Kersed]

The deck editor automatically adds/removes land based on the number of cards in your deck. Similar to the way the Magic Online deck editor suggests how much land you should use. I'm not sure if it takes into account your mana curve and the actual CMCs of your cards or not though.

[jeffwadsworth]

Nothing is going to kill interest in Forge. I play with all the Magic-based apps and prefer Forge over them all. Magarena comes the closest, but doesn't have the card base yet. If the mini-max stuff works out, it may just eclipse them all.