Progression through Sets?

[Roujin]

Now that along the traditional boosters and the recent precon decks there's Starter/Tournament Sets / Fat Packs or whatever they're called, the amount of things available to buy in quest mode is rising and rising. Which is not a bad thing per se, but gave me an idea:

(Note: I'm just writing down a bunch of ideas here and am interested if anyone else likes this idea or not Actual coding work from myself is not likely in the near future due to uni work. If anyone else is excited about these ideas and implements something along the lines, I won't complain )


Maybe it would be interesting to not throw everything at the player at once, but to have some kind of progression through the sets. Meaning that first only Alpha is available, then the newer sets become available one after another until we arrive at the present. The various packs and precon decks become available accordingly.

This progression could be integrated into the quest mode (would probably change gameplay fundamentally though) or a new mode.
The problem of integrating it with quest mode is that it clashes with the current kind of progression in quest mode: early (=easy) opponents are likely to have cards from new sets - it would be a pain to rework them/provide alternative quest opponents that use only old cards.
Of course a whole new game mode would be a lot of work on the other hand.


Anyway I think it would be nice to add some "date-of-availability" metadata to all the sets and packs. For quest decks/precons either also add it, or autodetect it by checking all the contained cards' sets for their availability date.
It can still be decided how to use this kind of information afterwards.


Another possibility once we have that information would be playing at any point of Magic history: Specify a date and only the cards that existed back then are available.
The formats ("Standard", "Extended", etc.) would be what they meant at that point in time.
At present the formats are read from a file formats.txt, which represents only the current definition of these formats. This would need to be changed to something else that specifies the formats over time.


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Long story short, I would love "date-of-availability" info added to sets, packs, (decks), (precons)...
The question is, in what format to give that information. I guess a human-readable string like "yyyy-mm-dd" would be a good idea?

Also, format definitions would need to be changed in order to define them over time - any ideas how this could be done exactly?

Once we have these things, it could be used for a) playing at a chosen point in time, b) a game mode (quest mode or new one) that has a progression through time and thus through the sets.

What do others think of this idea? Is it worthwhile? Would you like progression through the different sets over time, like they appeared in real life?

[edessa]

I would like to see some progression through the sets, making them avalaible maybe according to the number of games you have win. Also in my opinion it doesnt matter that the easy decks use some of the newer sets cards even an older card based deck could give them fight and win most of the time. So in conclusion I would like to see some progression across the sets.

[friarsol]

Funnily enough, this was one of my first requests when I first found Forge. The problem is finding someone interested in coding it up. Once I started coding for the team, there was a bunch of other things I wanted to do first, and it slid way down on the priorities for me. These days I'm lucky enough to find time to improve some of the structures, let along add new stuff like this.

Here's my original post if you are interested in the discussion. Keep in mind, Forge was a very different beast back in Summer '10:

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=2804&p=36422#p36422

[Max mtg]

It would be great to make such progresson, but we should not start with alpha and its power nine avaliable at the beginning. Maybe Tenth edition or even seventh would be a better start. Treat ABU as the ancient's secrets to discover - like potent artifacts one can locate during some special assignment. (See also, how it is done in Wagic. They start with tenth edition and somehow unlock other sets)

We might think of blocks as of separate chapters, played with a limited cardpool - to experience better the mechanics of that very block. After completion player keeps his cards, gains access to that editions of magic product, and can use the power of his whole collection to beat "hardmode" or repeatable 'daily' challenges... in order to acquire badges needed to initiate most powerful cards related expeditions.


Introduction of real historical date of avaliability in setdata.txt is a good idea. It can be used later on some how. Can be done right now. No need to change anything else.

[Roujin]

@friarsol: interesting read, thanks for the link

@max mtg:
You have a point there regarding the power of these old sets.
For the approach on progression you describe, the historical date of availability cannot be used then though. The progression must then be specified somehow else (in code / a file).

I feel that these two variants each have some justification.. from a power level standpoint, it does make more sense to start with some later core set like you wrote, and have the (real-life-)early A/B/U sets as (ingame-)late unlocks.
On the other hand a chronological progression that mimics the release of sets in real life sounds like an interesting game mode - and it also intuitively makes "more sense", imo.

[Agetian]

I find this idea really interesting, though why not make the "starting point" (starting set) flexible, so that it can be configured in the settings? So people who want to start from 7th ed can start from the 7th ed, and people willing to start with M10 will be able to start with M10?

[Chris H.]

Progression through sets sounds interesting, not sure if it would work with the current fantasy mode. Fantasy mode has a collection of AI decks which tend to use whatever cards are available for a given theme type of deck.

Progression through sets would likely require a new game mode or the original quest mode could be modified and changed to handle this new game type.

We would need to have new opponent decks to face, ones which are based upon a given set/block. Might be possible to use the current code for random theme decks.

I see us playing with just the available cards in a given set/block for awhile and then progressing to the next. For the most part we would lose access to the older sets/blocks.

To make this interesting, we could use the previous suggestion of playing at the local FNM event. Playing an opponent using a random starter deck for one match. Playing in a tournament style draft mode game - this would require code changes so we could see AI vs AI matches. Maybe a few matches vs AI random generated decks from a given set/block.

Maybe have to win against a random theme deck from a given set/block to advance. At some point we would be able to use all of the cards from different sets/blocks and face opponents from the fantasy duel decks.

It is fun to think about, but it would likely require a lot of new code.

[Sloth]

@max mtg:
You have a point there regarding the power of these old sets.
For the approach on progression you describe, the historical date of availability cannot be used then though. The progression must then be specified somehow else (in code / a file).

I feel that these two variants each have some justification.. from a power level standpoint, it does make more sense to start with some later core set like you wrote, and have the (real-life-)early A/B/U sets as (ingame-)late unlocks.
On the other hand a chronological progression that mimics the release of sets in real life sounds like an interesting game mode - and it also intuitively makes "more sense", imo.

I think the easiest way is to make a text file that states how many wins are needed to unlock each set. This file can be modified and shared by the users, to make everyone happy (if a player doesn't like a set he may even exclude it altogether).

When starting a new quest the user can check "Set progression" (like "Standard (Type 2) card pool"), which will change the following things:
- The starting card pool will consist of cards from sets with unlock level 0.
- The spell shop will only sell cards, boosters, precons, tournament and fat packs from unlocked sets.
- The card prices for winning a match will come from unlocked sets only (no format choice).

[Max mtg]

Number of wins to unlock sets seems boring. Need a better balance between constructed and limited modes.
Consider instead campain of DOTP 2012 as reference - imagine a similiar campain in each block. Complete matching core set to gain access to its expert sets.

[moomarc]

Number of wins to unlock sets seems boring. Need a better balance between constructed and limited modes.
Consider instead campain of DOTP 2012 as reference - imagine a similiar campain in each block. Complete matching core set to gain access to its expert sets.

That sounds like it would be amazing. I'd play that more than any other mode.