Tarot Card Skill Tree Discussion

[klokwerkaos]

I'm more skeptical of any time cards are involved... I don't like card shaped things because it automatically conjures this notion:

 

BUY MORE BOOSTER PACKS.

 

Even if it's clearly marketed that this isn't the case, it still sends that message.

 

I also don't enjoy the notion of power being tied to randomness and/or in game purchase.

 

I can however, accept that cosmetic alterations could be cool for various stuff...

 

IE, your fireball is green instead of red or whatever, and that's a super rare thing you have to fight to acquire. Sure.

 

But once it starts adding base power to a character, the whole thing devolves into either P2W, or if not tied to money but play time, THIS GAME IS NOW YOUR LIFE, otherwise don't bother... it's the problem I have with PoE and EVE online. Both games essentially require you to play 8 days a week, 25 hours a day if you want to be at the upper echelons, either that or you just get extremely lucky for no reason. To me, both games require too much investment even as an avid gamer that has many 1000s of hours in many games. Ultimately for me that level of investment becomes frustrating.

 

If you want to have X cosmetic item be super rare in game... cool... but consider also adding it to the cash shop (and NOT in a loot box). This way the player has agency in how they obtain it. Do I really want to spend $5 on a single card or do I just want to grind it out for 6 hours? I have the options, power is mine to choose. Maybe I just want to play the game so I choose to grind it. Maybe I am just frustrated that I'm not advancing because I've already been grinding for it for 10 hours when average grind time is 6 hours... the option lets me choose.

 

I do think however, that making tiers of the cards make sense.

 

Lets call a card "fireball"

 

Fireball is a base card you get with X class, but it's level 0. You can then spend an in game resource to upgrade it over time, but really what you want to do is get the next tier, tier 1 fireball, which starts off a little less powerful than a rank 10 tier 0... but it goes much further beyond the max cap (in this case 10 ranks) if you rank it up (maybe by combining the same card or spending some other inventory based currency like death essence or whatever you want to call it).

 

For example, lets say Tier 0 rank 0 does 1-4 damage, rank 1 does 2-5 damage until you get to rank 10 which is 11-14 damage... but Tier 1 rank 0 does 9-12 damage... so until you rank it up your old gear isn't useless but your new gear needs investment, and with investment it becomes ultimately more powerful with a max cap at rank 10 of 19-22 damage... putting this up to max tier and rank also means we're also still looking at the most powerful players having plenty more power than tier 0 characters, but also not so much so that a few tier 3ish characters can't still put them down, meaning the power disparity isn't so insane that we need to retool the whole game.

 

This allows that you could say, get up to maybe Tier 5 (for 6 tiers total) and Tier 5 being especially difficult to get, but not unreasonable to obtain if you target grind it (ie, I really never like drop tables with 1% or less drops, that's never cool, it feels bad as a player, since the loot is too diverse for a given thing and you're bound to end up with all kinds of garbage you don't want or need before you ever get your thing).

 

This also allows that the amount of currency you invest (ie cards or death essence or whatever) can become an upward sloping scale each interval, making the highest levels hardest to obtain.

 

Additionally, for rarity, you could say, well yes, it drops your Tier 5 card at this boss... but... it has an X% chance to start at X rank, meaning it feels more special to get a rank 2 Tier 5 card than a rank 0 Tier 5 on the drop, which is also inherently more valuable to the player.

 

Ultimately, this allows players to upgrade over time, limits the max capacity of powers and spaces out how fast they can speed run to max power of everything (ie being done with the game) while also adding complexity and utility...then it also makes those rare cosmetic cards valuable, because you can fuse them into an existing set to gain the trait or level them up, and have set of max rank, green, blue and red fireballs... which allows you to have different cosmetic options and adds longevity to your loot collection career via cosmetic.

 

What I would definitely not like to see is that Tier 5 anything or unique ability anything be limited edition only, as that presents all the problems of predatory fomo.

 

Another way to manage some more diversity would be to add augment/meta cards...

 

IE, your fireball card now has +1m AoE or +2 damage or +3 m range or +1 fireball, -.5 sec cast time, +2 seconds ignite time, etc.

 

It requires you have the target ability equiped of course. This allows the characters to build to their playstyle by increasing power of certain things while diminishing their overall utility... so if you just wanna be the spam caster you totally can, or if you want a big boom cannon, you can do that, or if you want to reign death from above across the whole battlefield you can do that if you want to sacrifice all your other utility...

 

The major consideration here being that things still need to have a max cap, meaning you can't reduce your cast time to less than say .3 seconds or something even if you have the cards to do so otherwise you end up with stun lock range casters and such and that's never fun.

Edited November 7, 2021 by klokwerkaos

[Elveone]

@klokwerkaos you should probably take a look at how the system is supposed to work

. It is not a system where something rare is dropped with a small chance from a boss but a system where doing something really hard and unique might result in a altered skill card.

[Denis Dyack]

I'm more skeptical of any time cards are involved... I don't like card shaped things because it automatically conjures this notion:

 

BUY MORE BOOSTER PACKS.

 

Even if it's clearly marketed that this isn't the case, it still sends that message.

 

I also don't enjoy the notion of power being tied to randomness and/or in game purchase.

 

I can however, accept that cosmetic alterations could be cool for various stuff...

 

IE, your fireball is green instead of red or whatever, and that's a super rare thing you have to fight to acquire. Sure.

 

But once it starts adding base power to a character, the whole thing devolves into either P2W, or if not tied to money but play time, THIS GAME IS NOW YOUR LIFE, otherwise don't bother... it's the problem I have with PoE and EVE online. Both games essentially require you to play 8 days a week, 25 hours a day if you want to be at the upper echelons, either that or you just get extremely lucky for no reason. To me, both games require too much investment even as an avid gamer that has many 1000s of hours in many games. Ultimately for me that level of investment becomes frustrating.

 

If you want to have X cosmetic item be super rare in game... cool... but consider also adding it to the cash shop (and NOT in a loot box). This way the player has agency in how they obtain it. Do I really want to spend $5 on a single card or do I just want to grind it out for 6 hours? I have the options, power is mine to choose. Maybe I just want to play the game so I choose to grind it. Maybe I am just frustrated that I'm not advancing because I've already been grinding for it for 10 hours when average grind time is 6 hours... the option lets me choose.

 

I do think however, that making tiers of the cards make sense.

 

Lets call a card "fireball"

 

Fireball is a base card you get with X class, but it's level 0. You can then spend an in game resource to upgrade it over time, but really what you want to do is get the next tier, tier 1 fireball, which starts off a little less powerful than a rank 10 tier 0... but it goes much further beyond the max cap (in this case 10 ranks) if you rank it up (maybe by combining the same card or spending some other inventory based currency like death essence or whatever you want to call it).

 

For example, lets say Tier 0 rank 0 does 1-4 damage, rank 1 does 2-5 damage until you get to rank 10 which is 11-14 damage... but Tier 1 rank 0 does 9-12 damage... so until you rank it up your old gear isn't useless but your new gear needs investment, and with investment it becomes ultimately more powerful with a max cap at rank 10 of 19-22 damage... putting this up to max tier and rank also means we're also still looking at the most powerful players having plenty more power than tier 0 characters, but also not so much so that a few tier 3ish characters can't still put them down, meaning the power disparity isn't so insane that we need to retool the whole game.

 

This allows that you could say, get up to maybe Tier 5 (for 6 tiers total) and Tier 5 being especially difficult to get, but not unreasonable to obtain if you target grind it (ie, I really never like drop tables with 1% or less drops, that's never cool, it feels bad as a player, since the loot is too diverse for a given thing and you're bound to end up with all kinds of garbage you don't want or need before you ever get your thing).

 

This also allows that the amount of currency you invest (ie cards or death essence or whatever) can become an upward sloping scale each interval, making the highest levels hardest to obtain.

 

Additionally, for rarity, you could say, well yes, it drops your Tier 5 card at this boss... but... it has an X% chance to start at X rank, meaning it feels more special to get a rank 2 Tier 5 card than a rank 0 Tier 5 on the drop, which is also inherently more valuable to the player.

 

Ultimately, this allows players to upgrade over time, limits the max capacity of powers and spaces out how fast they can speed run to max power of everything (ie being done with the game) while also adding complexity and utility...then it also makes those rare cosmetic cards valuable, because you can fuse them into an existing set to gain the trait or level them up, and have set of max rank, green, blue and red fireballs... which allows you to have different cosmetic options and adds longevity to your loot collection career via cosmetic.

 

What I would definitely not like to see is that Tier 5 anything or unique ability anything be limited edition only, as that presents all the problems of predatory fomo.

 

Another way to manage some more diversity would be to add augment/meta cards...

 

IE, your fireball card now has +1m AoE or +2 damage or +3 m range or +1 fireball, -.5 sec cast time, +2 seconds ignite time, etc.

 

It requires you have the target ability equiped of course. This allows the characters to build to their playstyle by increasing power of certain things while diminishing their overall utility... so if you just wanna be the spam caster you totally can, or if you want a big boom cannon, you can do that, or if you want to reign death from above across the whole battlefield you can do that if you want to sacrifice all your other utility...

 

The major consideration here being that things still need to have a max cap, meaning you can't reduce your cast time to less than say .3 seconds or something even if you have the cards to do so otherwise you end up with stun lock range casters and such and that's never fun.

@klokwerkaos Great thread and thoughtful feedback but I believe I can put your worries to rest sentence:

 

If it affects gameplay, you will not be able to purchase it, thus putting all your fears to P2W ease.

 

Tarot cards are collected in-game and not through platinum.

[Temuldjin]

Snip.

 

Luckily the tarot cards will function more like a "skill tree" than a single buff. ( So not like this: Version 1 makes fireball green, version 2 reduced damage but increased AOE range, version 3 add a dot effect)

 

A tarot card will have " x " options available, where you only have " y " amount of options to customize it, so you cannot max out every single option, you have to pick and choose how you want to tailor make your individual tarot cards to how you want your character to be potentially making it unique in the process ( unless some options just ends up being vastly superior to others, which would result in: Tarot card "fireball" needs " Cookie cutter " points allocated to be "optimal" )