Apparently, this review was outdated before I even wrote it. I'll re-score this properly if I can play the current, NON-OUTDATED version on the North American server.
Edit: Okay, I updated the review. I won't be keeping the old version around unless you really want me to.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Bonuses
Amount of Cards - [+]
Card Art - [+ +]
Some of the Cards - [+]
Review:
THE Card Game (What’s with the “THE”, anyway? It’s not like THE Card Game is the only card game on SC2…) pits a group of 2-6 players against each other in a team vs. team battle. The way to battle each other is to use your cards and spawn units which will then crawl towards the enemy nexus and attack anything in their way. Some cards are rare and powerful, some cards cost more resources to play than others, and some of the cards are abilities that create an effect rather than spawn a unit.
If the developer plays his cards right, this style of map can be very entertaining and addictive, with a great deal of variety and a multitude of strategies for new and experienced players alike. Clord’s rendition is fairly interesting, featuring unique card images, achievements, and various other bells and whistles. However, THE Card Game does not escape the common pitfalls of the genre.
The game at large, in full view.
If anything, THE Card Game definitely succeeds with the cards themselves. The cards look similar to Magic: The Gathering cards in layout, with the resource cost in the top right, the name at the top, and the race/type at the top left. The description and unit stats are in the text box under the eye-pleasing card art box. The important stats are in a separate area with the unit’s damage and hit points. However, figuring out what those numbers mean is fairly difficult, initially. Seriously, it took our group a while to figure out that 3/17 means 3 damage and 17 HP.
The cards look pretty cool. It would be nice if the text was more formatted and if the #/# box was more clear, though.
There are no unique card units (they are all found in melee or the campaign) though the existing ones are very heavily modified in their stats, sometimes offering behaviors that completely contradict the melee purpose of the unit. Obviously, this could cause a lot of confusion for new players, which would basically result in a mad sprawl to see what each unit does in order to find out what to counter them with. Luckily, you can see the unit stats at will; the relevant combat statistics are shown in a widget at the top of the screen upon unit selection. Overall, the cards and the availability of information are both quite good for a map of this type.
The unit stats are visible at the top instead of the bottom, for whatever reason.
The game starts as soon as the loading screen ends, which is a fairly annoying issue. “But wait, Dark Rev, Nexus Wars starts the same way and you didn’t mention that at all in your review!” Yes, but the difference here is Nexus Wars has a large down-time before the units start killing each other. THE Card Game instantly throws cards into your hand and people will start summoning immediately. Depending on the card, your nexus could be attacked in as little as 10 seconds from the start of the game. Something like this could be capitalized upon by essentially thrusting the players into the action, but for a new player, figuring out a decent counter to the units thrown at you as soon as the game starts is an impossible task, despite the helpful loading screen.
Let me get back to the cards – specifically, the units they summon. The units in this map die very quickly, on average (especially, in my experience, the hero units). This is a gameplay choice for the better, in my opinion, but it does carry major risks: if the balancing is even slightly off, the game will be very frustrating for the players. Luckily, the balancing is actually, once you learn what all the units do and have some semblance of teamwork and strategy, pretty good. For new players, the game is a crapshoot of random units. Speaking of random, a card game always has its share of chances, random events, probabilities, and such, but THE Card Game goes overboard by making every card draw for everyone absolutely random. Why not have the players choose different decks or offer some other way of influencing what you get, rather than just hoping you get the right card after you discard a dozen of them? First of all, it decreases the amount of strategy in the game because the cards, after all, are completely random and there is only so much strategizing you can do based on that principle. In addition, it causes the game to get bland very quickly, as everyone will be using the same set of cards with the same set of probabilities. None of the summoned units are really unique, anyway, so it really cuts into the quality of the game.
All this isn’t to say that the whole game is bland – some of the cards are actually really neat. Summoning a hero is a cool thing to do since they are rarer than the other units and are generally pretty flashy, if not somewhat underpowered. The ability cards, however, are where it’s at. The nuke is sure to cause some panic, the life and especially the shield bonuses are cool, and so forth. This is one of the high points of THE Card Game, in my opinion, since the rest of the gameplay leaves something to be desired. It would be really nice to see a lot more ability cards, sometimes casting area buffs or dealing damage, or even healing the nexus. There is a great deal of potential here that just isn’t being exploited. Having some unique units would also be really cool and would help out the map considerably.
I could complain about the bland terrain, but instead I’ll mention unit upgrades: they’re cool, interesting, and potentially overpowered. It’s a nice addition, but certain upgrades are much more effective on some units than others. Basically, this compounds the fact that the gameplay has fundamental issues that need to be addressed, since the upgrades will disrupt what could be an otherwise impeccable balance.
To summarize, I had fun playing THE Card Game, despite its flaws. THE Card Game has more potential, but is held back by some basic issues related to, among other things, the fact that every player has a random set of the same deck of cards. This map is actually quite good, but the fundamental fault of having random units (despite the discard option) is what keeps it from the high score it could truly achieve.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
I played the version that was on NORTH AMERICAN battle.net today. I can rescore later if I can actually play the version with the shiny graphics in it.
I guess this just shows how awful the battle.net system is...
While the custom interface impressed me greatly, I was easily bored. I just felt like every couple of seconds I clicked a card and that was that; obviously, as someone who was never much of a fan of card, this type of gameplay doesn't really appeal to me. Even so, I think that the map needs MORE to do - something to micro, something to macro, some way to inject a little more action into the mix.
Also fact that European version has third resource type what is used for unit upgrades, adding even more depth. I try to wake that guy up who is supposed to update USA version of map to newest one.
This map looks well done, but, as mentioned in the review, the fact that one cannot customize one's deck is a major downside. Until a customization feature is implemented, I don't think I'll be playing this much.
Another thing I'd like to see is some way of making a rarity system that works if users are allowed to make their own decks. Something like at the end of each game players receive a pack which contains some cards (for example, 1 rare, 2 uncommons, 5 commons). This will also encourages users to stick a game out instead of leaving when they start to lose. Even if one loses a game, one still gains something. Re-playability is also aided by this system because users have a lasting collection that carriers through from game to game.
All in all, I'm glad this map was made and am hoping to see updates! Looks very promising! =)
Needing and wanting are two separate things. This map's idea is not to build more overpowered deck than your enemy instead using proper counters and more.
Second, WCIII didn't have dialog system to do such cool looking cards what hog up space thanks to Blizzard's format of choice (DDS images). Other thing is that we barely have models etc compared to WCIII to do multiple pre-defined decks like that.
The map is sort of like poker, you don't choose what cards you want to play with in poker, that would be silly, you need "luck" and skill, but probably most importantly cooperation with your team members.
You don't necessarily have to have a set of specific decks, but OiledTinman is right that this map is similar to poker. However, poker is not as fast-paced as this map and does not have a teamwork aspect. In other words, this map's true purpose is inaccessible to those who have not memorized enough of the counters to be able to make split-second correct choices. There are a number of ways to avoid this; use your imagination. But as it is, a continuous set of random cards comes off as quite weak.
Thats why you practice and play with a predefined team over a VoIP service, this is a map where you can evolve by practicing, its a easy map to learn but hard to master, and in my opinion thats exactly how all maps should be, whats the fun in a map if you can just spam marines as a tactic ;)
There is a very large difference between increasing accessibility and simply dumbing the map down, Tinman. Not everyone has a team of players willing to VoIP; it should be possible for a relatively new but skilled player to pose a challenge to experienced players.
That's not the point I was making originally, though. Simply put, totally random cards is not the optimal gameplay plan. The discard option doesn't help newbies in the slightest, either.
Well. I see despite dismissing my idea all those months ago you finally decided to put in a deck customization feature. Now I will play this map again. But, 100000 exp to unlock deck customization? That's a lot. You should let users make their own decks at something like 10000 exp after they've played a few games with the random deck... (I couldn't find an updated thread for your project clord so that's why I'm posting here). Thanks for adding this at all though. I was going to test out the deck builder right now since I just unlocked it last night but bnet is down.
You should also check out card shuffle and card warriors.
Card shuffle > the card game imo (I like it more in 3v3 than 5v5 though).
And card warriors is designed on 1v1 combat. Its also more complex than the other two (similar to wc3 card game map). Since it never gained enough fans I didnt get motivation to polish it more, it can still be fun sometimes.
I just played this map for the first time last night, and I saw this thread be bumped when looking over the forums so I thought I'd post my opinion. I liked what I saw but I really felt the gameplay was extremely shallow.
This isn't a card game... the cards almost feel like they're there to fool me. They may as well be "Spawn Unit X" buttons instead of cards and this may as well be just like any other tug-of-war map, because the "card game" aspect in this map was completely lost on me. I wish there was more to this map than managing vespene gas and spawning the right counters to units at the right times. As I said, nothing in this map makes me feel like I'm actually doing anything at all related to a Starcraft Card Game, which is where I felt sort of disconnected from the map; this is just another tug-of-war map to me.
When I think of a card game, I think Pokemon or MTG, both which make heavy use of Energy and Land cards, respectively. In this map I feel like I'm just drawing a random array of units.
I'd rather see the Starcraft equivalent of Land cards with Minerals/Gas/Terrazine; and actually make it look like I'm building a base or something. The same tug-of-war aspect can exist with spawning units from cards, but I just wish there was more of a card game feel to this.
On the plus side, the presentation is amazing and the cards themselves look really awesome, so great job with that. :)
I agree with this review. If I remember correctly, this map used to be alot more different. . IT was better. Maybe that was another Card Game? But I'm pretty sure it was this one.
Anyways, it would be cool if you did a review on MageCraft!
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Apparently, this review was outdated before I even wrote it. I'll re-score this properly if I can play the current, NON-OUTDATED version on the North American server.
Edit: Okay, I updated the review. I won't be keeping the old version around unless you really want me to.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
THE Card Game by Clord
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (B-)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C+)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (B-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (B+)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B)
Replayability - [2+]
Failures
Abrupt Start - [-]
Completely Random - [- -]
Unclear Stats - [-]
Bonuses
Amount of Cards - [+]
Card Art - [+ +]
Some of the Cards - [+]
Review:
THE Card Game (What’s with the “THE”, anyway? It’s not like THE Card Game is the only card game on SC2…) pits a group of 2-6 players against each other in a team vs. team battle. The way to battle each other is to use your cards and spawn units which will then crawl towards the enemy nexus and attack anything in their way. Some cards are rare and powerful, some cards cost more resources to play than others, and some of the cards are abilities that create an effect rather than spawn a unit.
If the developer plays his cards right, this style of map can be very entertaining and addictive, with a great deal of variety and a multitude of strategies for new and experienced players alike. Clord’s rendition is fairly interesting, featuring unique card images, achievements, and various other bells and whistles. However, THE Card Game does not escape the common pitfalls of the genre.
The game at large, in full view.
If anything, THE Card Game definitely succeeds with the cards themselves. The cards look similar to Magic: The Gathering cards in layout, with the resource cost in the top right, the name at the top, and the race/type at the top left. The description and unit stats are in the text box under the eye-pleasing card art box. The important stats are in a separate area with the unit’s damage and hit points. However, figuring out what those numbers mean is fairly difficult, initially. Seriously, it took our group a while to figure out that 3/17 means 3 damage and 17 HP.
The cards look pretty cool. It would be nice if the text was more formatted and if the #/# box was more clear, though.
There are no unique card units (they are all found in melee or the campaign) though the existing ones are very heavily modified in their stats, sometimes offering behaviors that completely contradict the melee purpose of the unit. Obviously, this could cause a lot of confusion for new players, which would basically result in a mad sprawl to see what each unit does in order to find out what to counter them with. Luckily, you can see the unit stats at will; the relevant combat statistics are shown in a widget at the top of the screen upon unit selection. Overall, the cards and the availability of information are both quite good for a map of this type.
The unit stats are visible at the top instead of the bottom, for whatever reason.
The game starts as soon as the loading screen ends, which is a fairly annoying issue. “But wait, Dark Rev, Nexus Wars starts the same way and you didn’t mention that at all in your review!” Yes, but the difference here is Nexus Wars has a large down-time before the units start killing each other. THE Card Game instantly throws cards into your hand and people will start summoning immediately. Depending on the card, your nexus could be attacked in as little as 10 seconds from the start of the game. Something like this could be capitalized upon by essentially thrusting the players into the action, but for a new player, figuring out a decent counter to the units thrown at you as soon as the game starts is an impossible task, despite the helpful loading screen.
Let me get back to the cards – specifically, the units they summon. The units in this map die very quickly, on average (especially, in my experience, the hero units). This is a gameplay choice for the better, in my opinion, but it does carry major risks: if the balancing is even slightly off, the game will be very frustrating for the players. Luckily, the balancing is actually, once you learn what all the units do and have some semblance of teamwork and strategy, pretty good. For new players, the game is a crapshoot of random units. Speaking of random, a card game always has its share of chances, random events, probabilities, and such, but THE Card Game goes overboard by making every card draw for everyone absolutely random. Why not have the players choose different decks or offer some other way of influencing what you get, rather than just hoping you get the right card after you discard a dozen of them? First of all, it decreases the amount of strategy in the game because the cards, after all, are completely random and there is only so much strategizing you can do based on that principle. In addition, it causes the game to get bland very quickly, as everyone will be using the same set of cards with the same set of probabilities. None of the summoned units are really unique, anyway, so it really cuts into the quality of the game.
All this isn’t to say that the whole game is bland – some of the cards are actually really neat. Summoning a hero is a cool thing to do since they are rarer than the other units and are generally pretty flashy, if not somewhat underpowered. The ability cards, however, are where it’s at. The nuke is sure to cause some panic, the life and especially the shield bonuses are cool, and so forth. This is one of the high points of THE Card Game, in my opinion, since the rest of the gameplay leaves something to be desired. It would be really nice to see a lot more ability cards, sometimes casting area buffs or dealing damage, or even healing the nexus. There is a great deal of potential here that just isn’t being exploited. Having some unique units would also be really cool and would help out the map considerably.
I could complain about the bland terrain, but instead I’ll mention unit upgrades: they’re cool, interesting, and potentially overpowered. It’s a nice addition, but certain upgrades are much more effective on some units than others. Basically, this compounds the fact that the gameplay has fundamental issues that need to be addressed, since the upgrades will disrupt what could be an otherwise impeccable balance.
To summarize, I had fun playing THE Card Game, despite its flaws. THE Card Game has more potential, but is held back by some basic issues related to, among other things, the fact that every player has a random set of the same deck of cards. This map is actually quite good, but the fundamental fault of having random units (despite the discard option) is what keeps it from the high score it could truly achieve.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
He added few days ago a revamp of the card interface so some of your points are outdated :(
I played the version that was on NORTH AMERICAN battle.net today. I can rescore later if I can actually play the version with the shiny graphics in it.
I guess this just shows how awful the battle.net system is...
@DarkRevenantX: Go
I agree with this review.
While the custom interface impressed me greatly, I was easily bored. I just felt like every couple of seconds I clicked a card and that was that; obviously, as someone who was never much of a fan of card, this type of gameplay doesn't really appeal to me. Even so, I think that the map needs MORE to do - something to micro, something to macro, some way to inject a little more action into the mix.
Also fact that European version has third resource type what is used for unit upgrades, adding even more depth. I try to wake that guy up who is supposed to update USA version of map to newest one.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/102827400-4.jpg
I revised the review, JSYK.
Well done. :)
This map looks well done, but, as mentioned in the review, the fact that one cannot customize one's deck is a major downside. Until a customization feature is implemented, I don't think I'll be playing this much.
Another thing I'd like to see is some way of making a rarity system that works if users are allowed to make their own decks. Something like at the end of each game players receive a pack which contains some cards (for example, 1 rare, 2 uncommons, 5 commons). This will also encourages users to stick a game out instead of leaving when they start to lose. Even if one loses a game, one still gains something. Re-playability is also aided by this system because users have a lasting collection that carriers through from game to game.
All in all, I'm glad this map was made and am hoping to see updates! Looks very promising! =)
Actually lack of deck building is upside, otherwise map's idea would be out of the window. It is card game made to fit RTS style gameplay instead TBS.
Ever play CardCraft in wc3? That map had a pretty good rendition of this. You need to take some cues from that map.
Needing and wanting are two separate things. This map's idea is not to build more overpowered deck than your enemy instead using proper counters and more.
Second, WCIII didn't have dialog system to do such cool looking cards what hog up space thanks to Blizzard's format of choice (DDS images). Other thing is that we barely have models etc compared to WCIII to do multiple pre-defined decks like that.
The map is sort of like poker, you don't choose what cards you want to play with in poker, that would be silly, you need "luck" and skill, but probably most importantly cooperation with your team members.
You don't necessarily have to have a set of specific decks, but OiledTinman is right that this map is similar to poker. However, poker is not as fast-paced as this map and does not have a teamwork aspect. In other words, this map's true purpose is inaccessible to those who have not memorized enough of the counters to be able to make split-second correct choices. There are a number of ways to avoid this; use your imagination. But as it is, a continuous set of random cards comes off as quite weak.
@DarkRevenantX: Go
Thats why you practice and play with a predefined team over a VoIP service, this is a map where you can evolve by practicing, its a easy map to learn but hard to master, and in my opinion thats exactly how all maps should be, whats the fun in a map if you can just spam marines as a tactic ;)
There is a very large difference between increasing accessibility and simply dumbing the map down, Tinman. Not everyone has a team of players willing to VoIP; it should be possible for a relatively new but skilled player to pose a challenge to experienced players.
That's not the point I was making originally, though. Simply put, totally random cards is not the optimal gameplay plan. The discard option doesn't help newbies in the slightest, either.
Well. I see despite dismissing my idea all those months ago you finally decided to put in a deck customization feature. Now I will play this map again. But, 100000 exp to unlock deck customization? That's a lot. You should let users make their own decks at something like 10000 exp after they've played a few games with the random deck... (I couldn't find an updated thread for your project clord so that's why I'm posting here). Thanks for adding this at all though. I was going to test out the deck builder right now since I just unlocked it last night but bnet is down.
You should also check out card shuffle and card warriors.
Card shuffle > the card game imo (I like it more in 3v3 than 5v5 though).
And card warriors is designed on 1v1 combat. Its also more complex than the other two (similar to wc3 card game map). Since it never gained enough fans I didnt get motivation to polish it more, it can still be fun sometimes.
Complex in different way.
I just played this map for the first time last night, and I saw this thread be bumped when looking over the forums so I thought I'd post my opinion. I liked what I saw but I really felt the gameplay was extremely shallow.
This isn't a card game... the cards almost feel like they're there to fool me. They may as well be "Spawn Unit X" buttons instead of cards and this may as well be just like any other tug-of-war map, because the "card game" aspect in this map was completely lost on me. I wish there was more to this map than managing vespene gas and spawning the right counters to units at the right times. As I said, nothing in this map makes me feel like I'm actually doing anything at all related to a Starcraft Card Game, which is where I felt sort of disconnected from the map; this is just another tug-of-war map to me.
When I think of a card game, I think Pokemon or MTG, both which make heavy use of Energy and Land cards, respectively. In this map I feel like I'm just drawing a random array of units.
I'd rather see the Starcraft equivalent of Land cards with Minerals/Gas/Terrazine; and actually make it look like I'm building a base or something. The same tug-of-war aspect can exist with spawning units from cards, but I just wish there was more of a card game feel to this.
On the plus side, the presentation is amazing and the cards themselves look really awesome, so great job with that. :)
I agree with this review. If I remember correctly, this map used to be alot more different. . IT was better. Maybe that was another Card Game? But I'm pretty sure it was this one.
Anyways, it would be cool if you did a review on MageCraft!