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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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Welcome to the first edition of "Design vs. Development," Metagame.com’s weekly look the design and development of the Vs. System. My name’s Danny Mandel, and I’m one of the Upper Deck guys who lives, eats, and breathes the Vs. System. Each Friday I’ll cover topics such as how a super-hero becomes a card, how a team gets its own game identity, and how we plan ahead from expansion to expansion. Today I’m going to explain a bit what the difference between design and development is. I’ll also answer a few questions that have been floating around the various forums.
First, a quick rundown on what I mean by design and development. For technical purposes, by “design,” I mean the creative endeavor of planning out a set and coming up with new card ideas. By “development,” I mean the playtesting and rules enforcing that determine which cards make the cut into an expansion and in what form those cards will be printed.
When we start out to design a new expansion, we try to let our imaginations run wild. We don’t worry about card balance or templating (the proper wording to put on a card). All we care about is coming up with lots of cool ideas and getting them down on paper. When first designing a set, the answer to everything is, “Yes!”
Can we make a character that steals other characters’ powers? Yes!
Can we make a location that lets you “control” a character even when you don’t? Yes!
Can we make a plot twist out of scratch-n-sniff paper that smells like cheese? Uh, yes?
If design is all about ignoring boundaries, development is all about setting them. The role of a developer is to make sure the game works properly, that there aren’t cards that break the rules of the game in a way the game or metagame can’t handle. (I’ll explain how the metagame affects design and development in a future article.) Development tests the cards that design comes up with and either changes their power level, cuts them from the set entirely, or, in some very rare cases, lets the card go to press still in its original form. If design is all about saying, “Yes!” then development is all about saying, “No!” Or at least, “Well, maybe . . . hmm, I’m not sure. Let me get back to you.”
I’m not saying the Vs. System's designers and developers hate each other or even write threatening letters to each other very often. In fact, the process of design and development is very organic, with members from both groups working together to make the best game they can.
The designers know that without development, the game would be all but unplayable, packed with overcosted terrible cards, undercosted bombs that tear at the integrity of the game, and worst of all, cards that don’t even function properly within the rules.
The developers know that without design, the game would be as carefully balanced as a mathematical proof, and about as much fun. (I’m sure there are some wiseguys out there who are thinking, “Oh, yeah? Well, I think mathematical proofs are great fun.” And to those people I say: Uh, okay.)
Design and Development: two great tastes that taste great together. Or something like that.
Let Us Know
The guys at UDE love hearing feedback on the game. I know I cruise the forums at least once a day. Positive or negative, everything you’ve got to say is helpful. And it’s a two-way street. If enough of you tell us there’s something you like, we’ll try to do more of it. If there’s something enough of you hate, well, you get the idea.
We also love email. While we don’t have time to respond to every email we receive, I can promise you we read them all, and every once in a while we use them to flesh out the inaugural article of a weekly column.
The following two questions came from the forums at VSRealms.
“What’s the process of making a card like?”
and
“How do you determine the resource cost relative to a card’s stats? Is there a set formula? How do you 'price' each card’s ability?”
I felt that these questions were apropos to a general discussion about design and development, so here goes.
Part One: Designing Vs.
“What’s the process of making a card like?”
There are a lot of steps between a card’s conception and its finalization. Because the second question will deal with development, I’m going to answer this one from design’s perspective.
There are lots of ways to go about creating a card. But before you begin, it’s important to have a goal. Is this card supposed to be a generic plot twist that boosts a character’s ATK? Is it supposed to be a famous location in the Marvel Universe that can protects its team? Is it an iconic character that will be a major player on the tournament scene?
 As an example, I’ll walk through how Professor X (the Charles Xavier version) was designed. We liked the idea of giving some telepaths the ability to force an opponent to discard. We represented this on Psylocke by having her discard power trigger off of breakthrough endurance loss. This made thematic sense because she's a ninja (and thus great in combat), and in addition to her physical weapons, she often manifests her “psychic knife.” But while Psylocke’s discard was contingent on combat, we felt the Professor should be able to force a discard any time he wants.
One of the early versions of the Prof looked something like this:
Professor X
Charles Xavier
When PX comes into play, target player discards a card.
Activate >>> Target player discards a card.
As you can see, we didn’t have his cost locked down, or his ATK/DEF. We hadn’t yet decided on whether or not to give him range. (As you’ll see in a future article, what super-powers should count as range was a point of high debate for a long time.) We were pretty sure he wasn’t going to get flight.
You also might notice that the above Professor X can use his power any time (not just in the combat phase), and that his first power triggers whether or not you control another X-Men character.
We knew we wanted him to be a strong late game character, but we also wanted players to be able to recruit the X-Men’s leader early enough in the game that he could use his discard power more than once. We also knew we were going to do a larger, more powerful version of him. We decided to make him a 5-cost character for playtesting and gave him 9 ATK and 9 DEF, which is slightly above average at that cost. We decided to give him range, as he can read or assault another character’s mind from over a great distance. With a tentative cost and set of stats we sent him to the battle lines for playtesting.
So how did the above card turn into the finished product?
Part 2: Developing Vs.
“How do you determine the resource cost relative to a card’s stats? Is there a set formula?”
The exact costing of a card is a complex issue, but in general terms there is no “set” formula for determining the cost of a card. For example, let’s say after a lot of playtesting we’d decided that the above Professor X should cost between 5 and 6 resource points. Since we can’t cost a card at a fraction of a point, we’re left with three options.
1.Overcost him.
We make him cost 6 and leave it at that. Sure, he might be kind of weak for a 6-drop (a character you want to drop into play on turn 6), but some people will still play him, and life will go on.
2.Undercost him.
We make him cost 5 and cross our fingers that he’s not so good as to be unbalanced. It's fine for a card to be aggressively costed—in fact, a big part of what separates a good player from a great player is the ability to evaluate the power level of a card. However, if everyone shows up at the big money tourney running nothing but decks built around Professor X, we’ve probably made a mistake.
3. Change him.
To be fair, this option is really several options all rolled into one. It basically involves tweaking his powers or adding restrictions until we get him to a point where he’s closer to costing 5 or 6.
After some testing, we realized a few interesting things about Professor X. For starters, his payment power could be especially nasty if it could be used at any time. Let’s say a player has no cards in hand. That player draws two cards during the draw phase. Then the Prof knocks one of those cards away before the player has a chance to put a resource into play and recruit a character. Combine the Prof with the power-absorbing Rogue, and that player will never get to recruit again. Ouch. In the end, we felt the Prof’s discard alone was powerful enough, so we added the “Use this power only during the combat phase” restriction.
We also learned that his come into play power was nothing to sniff at. We didn’t want to team stamp him too hard, so we eventually decided that if you wanted the double discard (when he comes into play and when you first use his power), you had to earn it. Therefore, we made his come into play trigger only if you control another X-Men character. You can splash Professor X into any deck, but he works best when surrounded by his students.
Eventually, we decided to lower his ATK and DEF to 8/8. This left him a bit underpowered in combat, but still with a strong power. So, did we overcost him, undercost him, or make him just right? That’s for you and the metagame to decide.
Please send any questions or comments to dmandel@metagame.com, and come back next week for a look at building up, the character curve, and why blind sculptresses are so dangerous.
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