Quest Decks Discussions

[Chris H.]

Dividing up the decks by wins (or the number of cards that you have) sounds good. We probably need to divide up the decks into broad categories: like easy, medium, hard. And on Easy mode the player will play against 5 easy decks, 3 medium, and 2 hard. And on Medium the player will play against 5 easy decks, 10 medium, and 5 hard.

It would probably be easiest for those of us who create and modify the quest decks to have a field in the deck file that states whether the deck is easy, medium, hard.

Or we could keep the current file format and have a second data file equate the name of each quest deck with its difficulty factor.

The idea of using the number of cards in the deck to determine the difficulty level should be a last resort ... it will likely impose a restriction that we deck creators would rather do without.

Ultimately, we the deck creators will let you coders decide which is the best way to code this feature.

[mtgrares]

I usually just play quest on easy since 10 games is long enough for me. (I had delusions that I would enjoy 50+ games.) I really enjoy playing against "theme" decks like Battle of Wits and the wacky Elvish Piper. Theme decks aren't really powerful but they they are fun to play against.

[mtgrares]

Ultimately, we the deck creators will let you coders decide which is the best way to code this feature.

Hm...well you probably know how I will code this feature. You have 3 files: easyDecks.txt, mediumDecks.txt, hardDecks.txt which just lists the names of the deck, much like common.txt.

It would probably be easiest for those of us who create and modify the quest decks to have a field in the deck file that states whether the deck is easy, medium, hard.

Changing the user interface is too hard because the Deck object would also have to be changed.

[Chris H.]

Hm...well you probably know how I will code this feature. You have 3 files: easyDecks.txt, mediumDecks.txt, hardDecks.txt which just lists the names of the deck, much like common.txt.

This would be great.

It would allow us to make the change over without having a large number of decks to start with. We could initially have the decks appear in more than one of the three files. And as more decks are created and added, we can start to limit decks to just one of the three files, easyDecks.txt, mediumDecks.txt, hardDecks.txt.

[mtgrares]

You could have more than 3 deck "divisions" other than easy, medium, hard but I think it gets confusing. There could be very easy and very hard but I'm not sure that would really help or not. It is ok if some of the medium decks are harder than others, or if a medium deck is very good only if the computer draws all the right cards.

[GandoTheBard]

Changing the UI would not be terribly hard from what it sounds like but it would probably be tedious. I understand not wanting to get dragged down into muddy details just for a mere convenience...however it would be good if there were some way deck builders could differentiate between the different decks besides the clumsy method of putting the difficulty/type/theme all in the title of the deck file.

5 difficuties would be ideal for the finished product so that those who are beginners face really simple challenges and those who are able to win consistantly have something to challenge them, however, this idea isn't really geared for the beginner users so 3 difficulties are probably sufficient.

mainly we want to ensure that all three main difficulties are properly represented. A deck that the AI can insta kill you on turn 3-4 should not be an easy deck no matter how easy it might be normally. Not that I expect us to be able to build such decks with the limited pool we have.

There might also be an unrated difficulty so that players who wish to add decks to the program don't have to concern themselves with rating their creations.

[Chris H.]

Once the easyDecks.txt, mediumDecks.txt, hardDecks.txt files are added to the code base we could have the three files look something like this (this is just an example):


easyDecks.txt:
Silver Surfer
Tarzan
Tarzan
Morpheus
Superman
Wolverine


mediumDecks.txt:
Albert Einstein
Battle of Wits
Battle of Wits
Frodo
Machines Mind
Morpheus
Silver Surfer
Tarzan
Wolverine
Wolverine


hardDecks.txt:
Burning Dragons
Genghis Khan
Luke Skywalker
Machines Mind
Machines Mind

[GandoTheBard]

Ive added 4 more decks to the potential list. They are all fairly mean at least against starting decks.

[Chris H.]

Ive added 4 more decks to the potential list. They are all fairly mean at least against starting decks.

Great, thank you. Do you want to go back and provide a link from the Quest Decks only message thread that you started? As time passes it might be difficult to keep track of all of the AI-QUEST decks.

http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=967

I am working on my second quest attempt as I try to acquire a wee bit more experience in the sealed-deck mode format.

I would like to start creating some easier decks myself that would be a good candidate for the early stages of the quest.

This current quest that I'm on gave me an incredible strong RW deck to start with and I tore the Tarzan deck to shreds with it. In fact, I have won all of my first 8 games. This includes beating the Battle of Wits and Machines Mind decks. I plan to try the Burning Dragons deck next. I think that the deck I have is likely to be the exception rather than the rule.

Have you had a chance to look at the 100 deck archive with AI decks? Some of them might be a candidate for the quest mode. Granted, they might need to be toned down somewhat to provide a fair challenge to the questers. With adjustments, they could provide us with some moderate and hard AI Quests decks.

[Chris H.]

I had a thought. It might be nice if the following two threads were stickied (Ithink that is the term used around here when we want to have messages always appear at the top)


Quest Decks Discussions

http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=975


and


Quest Decks only

http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=967




I realize that at some point, the size of our group might grow large enough for us to have someone step forward and become the moderator for our group.

[GandoTheBard]

Chris the biggest problem is two fold. 1) someone would need to be willing and able (timewise) and 2) Huggy or another Admin would have to approve. That said I don't think it is going to happen soon. But we do have Rares when he pops in. And you can always pm him. I agree for the sake of our sanity these threads should be stickied. And maybe we need an index thread as well so we can reference old decks with a click.

[Chris H.]

But we do have Rares when he pops in. And you can always pm him. I agree for the sake of our sanity these threads should be stickied.

Good idea, I just sent him a pm. Might take a few days. It should help to keep us organized.

[Chris H.]

I made a slight modification to the Tarzan deck. I replaced the Jamuuran Lion with Zebra Unicorn.

The older deck was deleted and I attached the newer version.

[mtgrares]

Stickied, I hope that helps.

5 deck divisions is fine, something like:
very easy
easy
medium
hard
very hard

[Chris H.]

@ Gando

I have played with and against the Burning Dragons deck. I have enjoyed the experience. We may decide to tone down the deck a wee bit for the quest.

I think that it may be OK to have a few decks at the top that are close to being unbeatable. This will give people a reason to come back and try again. I think we want to make sure that each grouping of opponents have at least 50% that are beatable after a hard fight.



I think that the other decks of yours are keepers:

Battle of Wits
Cats
Machines Mind



I have not had a chance to look at your other decks in any detail at this time. I want to look at the Look Ma No Lands deck. I think that this was to be another candidate.