Brainstorming / potential design for a pvp version of the roguelike / dungeon run modes in many digital card games. This mode would be digital only for obvious reasons.
- Choose starting Deck - There’s a pool of random starting decks (each containing 20 cards). You begin by being given a choice between, say, 3 of them to start your run with. The pool of potential decks would just be like, one for each dual source starting claim so 10. This only happens at the start of a run.
- Shop Phase - The shop displays an assortment of cards. Equal numbers of each source, but beyond that, random. Basically imagine just dealing cards from a cube. Maybe there’s also higher tier rarity cards that are only in this mode that you can get for a higher price or something. Adding a currency seems more boring than just using cards themselves as a currency through some kind of tiered rarity esque system. Anyway, ignoring any money systems for now. You can take, say, up to 8 cards (maybe there are cards that count as taking 2, or 3, etc.) There would be a minimum number of cards you can have in your deck n (n = upcoming match number * 5 + 20), and during the shop phase you can burn any cards from your deck (permanently) at no cost as long as you don’t go below your minimum deck size.
- You are paired with an opponent who has played an equal number of matches.
- Pre match draft - Simple short basic ass draft with your opponent with a single pack of cards (exclusive to this phase of this mode). These cards leave your deck after the match.
- Play your match.
- Repeat.
- Play until 2 losses or 7 wins, whichever comes first. Maybe do something where like, 5 wins is presented as a win, and 7 wins is presented as some kind of EXTREME ACCOMPLISHMENT BWOAH
- For those last two matches, you wouldn’t have any shop phase, so players queuing for match 5, 6, or 7, can all play against each other. This avoids any issues of queue times at the end being horrible.
- Player health resets between rounds.
- Generally nothing you do in match should have an affect on your future matches, to avoid any nonsense minmaxing there (for example avoiding killing an opponent to gain some persistent resource such as life or cards).
- Have special starting claims players can pick up. These would be mode exclusive as having more unique starting claims in constructed would be… very not good imo. Here it would be neat though.
- Maybe cards with special draft/shop related abilities?
- This mode can have digital only cards since it’s a mode that is only practical digitally anyway
- If your deck would run out of cards in this mode while playing a match, instead a copy of your starting deck for that match is shuffled in as your new deck. This is to avoid any issues with players running out of cards and having to balance deck sizes. Decks will need to get larger over the course of runs otherwise it will become rather annoying to have to cut as many cards as you add.
- Starting decks and pre match draft pool would rotate in and out semi regularly (possibly staggered, each lasting a month).
- The potential shop cards / shop set would be a seasonal thing, since it’s basically a cube, and the majority card pool for the format.
- Probably have some kind of ranked system to make sure that people are playing against others in roouughly the same skill level. For example maybe just a 3 tiered ranked system where you play against people in the same rank as you, just so really good players and brand new ones aren’t battling each other in the early matches.
- The targets for who is in what rank would be roughly like: Rank C would be new/inexperienced players players. Rank B would be players who aren’t all that good but at least know what they’re doing and are somewhat familiar with the card pool. Rank A would be anyone who is decently good or better. Better players will find each other towards the end of runs anyway, and queue times are a thing (we are already restricting the queue by going on matches played.)
- Maybe cut the pre game draft for rank C players, so they just pick a starting deck and do the shop.
- Maybe also have a leaderboard of top players and some stats on them. This wouldnt have any impact on matchmaking or gameplay, but it’s nice to have some kind of reward for being one of the best. Maybe also a ‘most recent max wins’ section, so people can have their moment of fame if they get go all the way, kinda like the PD most recent 5-0 league runs thing on the home page.
- The shop would need to have a good amount of cards in it to have an equal number of each source. For example to have 5 cards of each source that’s 25 cards total on the screen. Some kind of function to limit the view for new players would be ideal (probably just limit the player to seeing cards of 2 or 3 sources based on their starting deck), either as a rank limited thing or a ui thing. Probably better as rank limited. Anyway that would just mean Rank C players can only see cards from two sources, rank B from 3 sources, and rank A from all sources.
- A simple way to do the shop card spread would be each source having 4 normal cards and 1 special rare/expensive card that takes up 2 or 3 of your card picks for the round. These wouldn’t be so much more powerful than others or anything, but having some kind of variable cost to cards in the shop probably makes things more interesting.
- Alternative to the above: All cards in the set/cube are equal, but when dealt out to sources, half of them (either a 3/2 or 3/3 split (latter would mean 6 per source)) are randomly set as more expensive, costing 2 card picks. This might make balance easier and avoid issues of having which power card you get be too random. On the other hand, maybe it’s less ‘cool’? Realistically, most of what makes a card more or less valuable will be the cards you already have anyway. Then again maybe this misses part of the point of making a mode like this, that you should be able to build broken shit, idk. Although, most of the brokenness tends to come from those universal powers you pick up that you get to start the game with, and in this mode, those can just exist as normal cards in the shop pool (they’d prob need to be toned down relative to how they are in other games anyway, but just being a card that has a cost already does that and being in a pvp mode already requires them to be not absolutely insane. Either way they’ll still have the vibe of picking up cool synergies you start the game with access too.)
- Shop would have unlimited basic claims/duals you can pick up as needed.
- Start with 20 cards.
- Gain (up to) 4-8.
- Burn down to (minimum) 25.
- Gain (up to) 4-8.
- Burn down to (minimum) 30
- etc
So this could be fine tuned to have a balance between being able to swiftly replace cards from your starting deck or you / pivot to a different strat, and cutting a bunch of cards being optimal (and annoying). Probably the balance would come from changing the value n is multiplied by in the equation for minimum deck size. Above it was (n = upcoming match number), n * 5 + 20. Could change 5 to 4 for example.
I was basically suggesting minimum deck size + burning cards being separate from buying them. That would kinda make thinning your deck a lot easier but I think that’s maybe a good thing for not being stuck with stuff you get early on So like you roll up to the shop you’ve got
- shop cards area
- your deck area
- cards in area
- cards out area
- minimum (deck) card number
- maximum card in number (with rarity/variable cost)
And you just move cards around to your liking within those constraints → press confirm & the in cards go to your deck and out cards are burnt
Maybe having like a sideboard would be better or worse than burning cards I don’t know, or some other way of storing cards for the next shop phase at a cost without playing them in your deck