Why doesn't WotC create their own online card game? We know that they have had several mechanics go through development but get rejected due to not working in meat space.
One example is the "forbidden" mechanic, which couldn't work because of all the shuffling it would require.
They have MTGO, which makes them a ton of money, which is all they care about.
I have never seen Richard Garfield playing his gunk deck on MTGO, and that is the only thing I care about.
Wotc should really make duel masters online
All you need to make is a snazzy interface, some coding and a bit of balance adjustments and you can just start porting all the sets slowly
Would be really cool and its simple enough for the mouthbreather audience, the game is dead outside of japan so they probably have nothing to lose.
I mean ive already made a lackeyccg plugin with my friend but it would be cool to be able to play with other people too
Not a big enough audience, I think. No other digital TCGs have done shit besides Hearthstone, due to its original blizzfan momentum.
And fracturing the fan base isn't usually a good idea. Too many people would see it as a step away from the proper game and get offended. And the casuals would never go from an intuitive, simpler system to MtG proper.
I'd really just rather have a new game with an improved version of Duel Masters' base mechanics.
The games could market each other, couldn't they? That's what blizzard did.
What objections do you have to DM mechanics? Aside from shit like instants that will basically just turn it back into mtg again.
Sure, you could have the whole "Play Magic: The Hearthstoning and get a special icon in MTGO and a free pack of Eldritch Moon", but unlike marketing HS with WoW or whatever, people aren't usually gonna play both.
All indications show that WotC is incredibly risk averse, and would rather ride to their two IPs to the ground (magic and dnd) than try anything new.
They just need to take MTGO and slap Duels of the Planeswalkers over it. There. You have an online MTG service that doesn't look like it was made in 2002 and forgotten.
Impossible. I get what you are saying, but you can't have actual MtG in Duels. It is a good facimile.
What was the "forbidden" mechanic?
Most of the time they can't even handle Modo. I think they would make a proper mtg game or remake mtgo but they cant. People have invested tons of money through the years in that shit (myself included, I like drafting at home). And now its too late to change the distribution practice. Duels is as much as we will get. Sets as expansions that you pay once and gain access to standard/limited would be amazing though.
Even with the shitty and buggy interface, I love doing all these various phantom drafts. Especially since it is basically guaranteed to be free if you don't rage quit.
Working at a software company really puts it in perspective the sheer amount of work this would require. They would need a whole other team and pay the old team out the ass because the old team is the only one who knows what the system currently is.
Cards that can only be put into your deck via the effects of other cards.
Doesn't seem impossible given checklist cards.
One thing is shield triggers. Casting a spell for free is too swingy. I think it would be more interesting if every spell could be cast(by paying its cost) after breaking from a shield, and there were little bonuses working out from that. Also, the untap step would be moved to being the last step of a turn, in order to have mana open for shield casting.
Another thing is the mana zone. I appreciate that it being a "dead" zone allows for removal to work off it, but I think doing something here would help make deck building more in-depth.
The problem is you'd have to shuffle your deck every time you used an effect that adds forbidden cards to your library.
The main problem was development being afraid of forbidden.
You could have the cards be checklist cards that are dead until an effect turns them on, at which point you pull out the appropriate forbidden.
Anyway, this is getting too custom card general for me.
But the point of forbidden cards was that you would have to get them into your deck during the game AND THEN DRAW THEM. That's why they were powerful cards.
I agree shield triggers could be made less swingy, good shields are the difference between like 2 free 3000 vanillas followed by like 3 holy awes and aggro just anticlimactically popping all your shields without anything happening, though most decks who care about that shit run shield manipulation anyway (from what ive gathered playing with my significantly more knowledgeable friend)
I think it could be improved a bit by giving more incentive to attack shields even for non-aggro decks, cause even if youve got dude advantage you often dont want to attack face due to sheer card advantage, not to mention uncomfortable suprises in the form of shield triggers, but I might just be inexperienced.
Also what do you mean about the mana zone being dead? There are a lot of effects that move cards out of it, and later sets have cards that do things in the mana zone by themselves.
The idea was a Praetor's Grasp-like effect on multiple different Phyrexian cards. The problem though is that you could potentially steal anything from your opponent, so a checklist would need to include every card ever printed or need to be completely blank. Additionally you'd need to keep a big stack of them around since they'd be marked and rendered mostly useless after each game.
Having outlined that replacement cards weren't really a viable strategy, they obviously can't let you put the actual card in your deck because you might just walk off with someone else's card, intentional or not.
Third, it's kind of shit to begin with. You have a card that can shuffle an opponent's card into your library? Neat, now you have maybe around a 1/50 chance of drawing a card you might not even be able to play. It's not a meaningful benefit. For all the hassle you have to go through to enable it, it's pretty much a useless mechanic.
>The problem is you'd have to shuffle your deck every time you used an effect that adds forbidden cards to your library.
That honestly doesn't sound any worse than fetchlands.
Fucking fetchlands. Fuck.
Sure. This would be a variant of the same concept. In fact, the cards could be even more powerful as a result as it fucks up your deck until you get an effect to turn them on.
Sure, you theoretically can have one in hand already when you turn them on, but that advantage completely compensated by the fact that you have literally dead cards in your deck until that happens.
Oh, it was opponent's cards? I just assumed it would be like, 2U Forbidden Divination, draw 4 cards.
There's little point in WotC creating another CCG when they already have the infinite cash cow that is Magic. What IS worth asking why they don't do any other sort of game. Where's the WotC MOBA?
Sounds too swingy to be a fun mechanic.
Not enough money. After all, they hired Stainless Games for Duels. They would need a real set of developers for a MOBA that would maybe get a few K players. Fucking Blizzard's MOBA, despite how much I love it, is still subsisting on scraps of the Titans in terms of audience.
I think I mistook the conversation. If they were entertaining another similar idea with a Yugioh style "Extra deck", I'm not sure about it.
>Clash of the Planeswalkers MOBA
Provided a competitive and balanced gameplay, I'd hit it.
Sometimes I wonder about how an (original) Star Wars: Battlefront/Lord of the Rings: Conquest style game set during Mirrodin Besieged could've been. You'd even have Praetors and Planeswalkers as the "Hero" characters.
> magic moba
> not duel masters moba
I mean, suit yourself if you dont want to play as humans in power armor literally made of guns, underwater skynet, six thousand types of different dragons or evangelion angels with a wicked sense of humor
>and later sets have cards that do things in the mana zone by themselves.
The problem is that not all cards do this. If you have cards that are better to use as lands and cards that are better to play normally, then deckbuilding lets you get better returns by having a mix.
Just remember, no matter where you go you can't escape him.
I mean its sure something that can be milked more but I dont see it as a problem, the mana zone is lively enough as it is, just deciding what to put into it as you play is pretty hard. Also if you make lots of effects mana destruction would have to be much more common, even now most mana-active cards are inert in the mana zone and removed for a trigger, if you have shit like "tap this mana for 1000 power" only red could do something about it. I dont think it is a cause for concern.