Patch Suggestion: Improving Quest Shop Usefulness

[Agetian]

Hello,
I've been questing quite a lot lately and there's really only one gripe that personally I have with the quest mode (I'm not sure if anyone else feels the same or not) - the quest shop is not very useful, especially at the earlier stages of the quest, because it only has a few cards beside the basic lands, and it only has one copy of each card for sale. I was thinking if maybe it would be worth improving that, and I have a suggestion (and a working prototype of a possible patch for getShopCards in ReadBoosterPack.java), but before I actually submit it here, I'd like to discuss it:

I was thinking that maybe it's worth to do at least one of two things (and both were already implemented in my patch and can be tweaked as necessary):

1) Perhaps, the quest shop should offer more than one copy of a card for more common cards? Say, it can offer only one copy of Rare cards, but 1 or 2 (at random) copies of Uncommon cards and 1, 2, or 3 copies (at random) of Common cards? That's what the current version of my experimental patch does, but I can tweak it as you believe would be better (if you even support the idea). At least, giving 2 or 3 copies for sale for more common cards could sometimes allow to be more strategic about deck building and not rely on mostly random options (even after 40 matches I only rarely end up with more than 2 copies of even the most common cards that I encountered when questing). Perhaps, only one copy of Rares and Uncommons should be offered, but more than one for the Commons - I'm not sure, to be honest, that's why I'm putting this up for discussion.

2) Perhaps, the initial amount of cards available in the quest shop should be upped a bit? Maybe not very significantly, but initially (during the first five or so matchups) the shop is just literally empty - and of course it gets better as the game progresses, but maybe the starting amount should be increased by a certain, perhaps not very significant, degree? Once more, my experimental patch has support for this as well, but since I have no idea what you believe would be good, I'm putting it up for discussion and I'm ready to tweak it in my patch as you see fit. I can also leave the initial value as it currently is if you believe it's a better option.

Thank you in advance for your opinions. If you find this proposal useful, I'm ready to listen to your suggestions, tweak my experimental code accordingly, and submit a patch here.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

I'll take Point #2 first since we've talked about that previously.
Early on is exactly when you would want a grab more useful cards to your initial pool. Right now the only consideration for the amount of cards that are available is the amount of Wins you have. Maybe the primary consideration should be what level you have reached. With a secondary consideration for number of Wins.

Example: A Level 0 Player might have 5 packs available to them (for Level 0) plus 0 packs available for number of Wins. A Level 10 player with 60 Wins, might have 1 Pack available to them (for Level 10) plus 2 Packs available for 60 Wins for a total of 3 Packs. These numbers should be tinkered and balanced to make the game progress well, but without letting the player completely overhaul their starting pool too early.

This would create an inverted Bell Curse. Early on you have a bit more available (to help you get started) then as you play you get a bit less and a bit less, until you reach the highest level, from there as your win total increases you will start having more cards available to you. This also creates an interesting supply and demand dynamic, where in the beginning you have a high supply but scarce resources to purchase much. And as you go the two flip, resources go up and supply diminishes.

For Point 1:
I'm not as sure about tweaking what the booster packs offer as far as number of each card. I think the best part of playing Quest is piecing together cards you've never played with, instead of focusing on a few ones you have. I would be more supportive of adding a Duplicator Shop. Where you could choose a card in your pool and pay 2-3x it's cost to get an extra copy of it, possible even increasing the multiplier based on how many of that card the user has. This would allow players to get more versions of cards while keeping the idea of "available boosters" intact.

[Agetian]

Example: A Level 0 Player might have 5 packs available to them (for Level 0) plus 0 packs available for number of Wins. A Level 10 player with 60 Wins, might have 1 Pack available to them (for Level 10) plus 2 Packs available for 60 Wins for a total of 3 Packs. These numbers should be tinkered and balanced to make the game progress well, but without letting the player completely overhaul their starting pool too early.

This would create an inverted Bell Curse. Early on you have a bit more available (to help you get started) then as you play you get a bit less and a bit less, until you reach the highest level, from there as your win total increases you will start having more cards available to you. This also creates an interesting supply and demand dynamic, where in the beginning you have a high supply but scarce resources to purchase much. And as you go the two flip, resources go up and supply diminishes.

This is a pretty interesting point, and I agree that it's indeed an interesting twist. Also, it would make the game potentially more strategic and might require more micromanagement early on (actually selling cards to get resources to buy cards one may need, etc.).

I agree that a Duplicator Shop would actually be a better idea than just selling multiple copies of the same card, I'm not quite sure if I'm competent enough yet (with Java and the Forge code) to attempt that but I'll see if I can get to the level that is adequate for a task like that, personally I think it's a brilliant idea. Thanks for your input!

[lazylockie]

I think the real problem is that cards you get/are available most of the times have no real interaction. For example Briarknit Kami has no synergy with Steelclad Serpent, but if the only available cards were from Kamigawa, then he'd be much better.

Since we already have draft with sets implemented, we could have a MYOS (make your own standard) for quest mode, where you pay credits to unlock certain sets. Scars of Mirrodin has no interaction with Champions of Kamigawa, but it probably has a LOT of interaction with Darksteel or Fifth Dawn. If your only available cards are from SOM and 5DN, chances are the limited crappy stuff together become much more effective (and buying something like Machinate would be interesting).

It's a similar idea to Wagic (except you have to buy everything there) and definetely it's quite enojyable making a bunch of crappy cards into a synergystic deck.

[Jaedayr]

One feature of Shandalar is there are a few creatures that when defeated can reward you with a duplicate card of your choice. That might be an option to add to a few quest mode opponents.

[lazylockie]

One feature of Shandalar is there are a few creatures that when defeated can reward you with a duplicate card of your choice. That might be an option to add to a few quest mode opponents.

That sounds like an excellent idea as well. Instead of getting 11 crappy cards you get a good single one, although it must be thought carefully so you don't end up with 4 copies of Jace

[Agetian]

I think the real problem is that cards you get/are available most of the times have no real interaction. For example Briarknit Kami has no synergy with Steelclad Serpent, but if the only available cards were from Kamigawa, then he'd be much better.

Since we already have draft with sets implemented, we could have a MYOS (make your own standard) for quest mode, where you pay credits to unlock certain sets. Scars of Mirrodin has no interaction with Champions of Kamigawa, but it probably has a LOT of interaction with Darksteel or Fifth Dawn. If your only available cards are from SOM and 5DN, chances are the limited crappy stuff together become much more effective (and buying something like Machinate would be interesting).

I absolutely agree that this is an interesting idea - unlocking sets by paying is a very nice way to actually shape the variety of cards strategically. I really enjoy the block drafting feature because of all the interaction options it creates, and I agree that a more flexible system like that would be awesome. Thanks for the input! Like I said, I'm still pretty far away from implementing something major like that, but I'll see what I can do in the future.

[Jaedayr]

One feature of Shandalar is there are a few creatures that when defeated can reward you with a duplicate card of your choice. That might be an option to add to a few quest mode opponents.

That sounds like an excellent idea as well. Instead of getting 11 crappy cards you get a good single one, although it must be thought carefully so you don't end up with 4 copies of Jace

Maybe have quests that are non-repeatable that give duplicates of specific colors, or specific types, like creatures, enchantments, artifacts, etc.

[lazylockie]

I've made a local patch by setting up a text file that limits the possible cards available at boosters, random rares and card shop. I must say it's amazing playing with block cards! Even from the first game the cards are so interactive that you won't need to reset the battles that much.

My code is still simple, (uses BufferedReader on ReadBoosterPack.java and QuestBoosterPack.java) but still gives a good insight of how would it be if we could buy additional sets. From what I see of the code, we could even make a JList (instead of Checkbox) when starting a new quest to leave the choice of what block/standard the player would like to start.

[Agetian]

I've made a local patch by setting up a text file that limits the possible cards available at boosters, random rares and card shop. I must say it's amazing playing with block cards! Even from the first game the cards are so interactive that you won't need to reset the battles that much.

My code is still simple, (uses BufferedReader on ReadBoosterPack.java and QuestBoosterPack.java) but still gives a good insight of how would it be if we could buy additional sets. From what I see of the code, we could even make a JList (instead of Checkbox) when starting a new quest to leave the choice of what block/standard the player would like to start.

Sounds like an interesting modification, and I think it might be one of the most impressive and useful quest mode changes if extended to buying the additional sets too.

[friarsol]

As I suggested above I've committed some changes to allow for more Card Availability early on in quests. While I like the idea of Booster/Set-centric purchasing, it seems to make more sense to have a separate Shop for that, and leave the "normal" CardShop as just a random smattering of whatever. Hopefully the changes I'm adding will allow early questers grab cards that are more useful for their deck when money is more limited so choices need to be greater.