@Viiksisika wrote:
I read the article and I still dont see point of making any TCG that involves drawing to implement any more RNG effects or atleast reduce those as close to 0 as possible. Or atleast make them as contollable as possible by the players.
As MR wrote on the article rolling a die in card games has been found to be bad desing because players dislike it. It also says that any RNG icons should not be presented in the game as it displeases players. Both of which can be found in the block mechanic of the pvzh. Of course players have somewhat ability to control it by deckbuilding, playing cards in correct order etc, but the third violation of a good RNG mechanic comes when the game is sometimes decided by that block mechanic.
Pvzh has other RNG effects too, that I dont understand either. Bounce a random dude, do damage to random lines etc. can also decide games and that is not how to make a good RNG in a game as MR writes. Heartstone also has lots of those cards and that is one of the reasons why I don't play the game anymore.
Drawing RNG or as MR writes Library RNG is the safest way of doing RNG and I think it should be the only RNG thing in these games. Of course there are other opinions too. If u can take that away as well good, but usually thats not the case and people are accustomed to it and expect it in a TCG nowadays. Enough is enough.
As a Spike-type player (hardcore, wants to win more than wants to have fun) this is the usual attitude when faced with a gameplay element based on luck. If you can't fully control it, it must be bad. But that ignores the many other player types and a big part of what makes a game fun and appealing. A lot of people don't realize that there is a huge percentage of players that do enjoy these types of "gimmicks". You really need to be in the game developing business and see how all the people react (not just those in the forums), how sales go, how game telemetry tells you about how people are playing and reacting to your game to see the big picture.
I can't convince you to like the idea of a luck based gameplay element or make you enjoy it just by telling you that you should, and unfortunately, I don't have access to the type of information that the creators of the game have, but from my experience in seeing how other games are designed and how people react to them, I can promise you that, in general, these types of things are very successful across a wide variety of player types and a large and considerable percentage of players and it is this why they are added to the games.
Also, you should realize that when the shield block seems to "decide" a game, it's not really the deciding factor, only the last factor before the game is decided. A whole slew of plays happened to get to that point, play that could have been manipulated by each player to have a different outcome, including multiple hits that affect the shield itself. MR is referring to single instances of randomness that affect the game and that decide the game without regards for the rest of the game. Don't know if you are a Harry Potter fan, but one design "flaw" that Quiddich has is that catching the golden snitch basically decides the game, regardless of how well the rest of the team played. If this was decided by the flip of a coin, then would be the type of element that can bring down good game design through randomness. In general, the shield block follows all 3 of the first random tips that MR suggests, and the 4th one is the only one that it doesn't in the sense that there is obvious randomness in how this works.
By the way, MR never uses the term RNG, that's because it actually means Random Number Generator and that only applies to luck emulated by a computer program. It's an unfortunate terminology that often bothers those who work in programming actual RNGs 😉
