TCGs WITHOUT THE "T" (Playing Around)
Vložit
- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
- So many new games make the promise of being "TCGs" but without the "T" part. No booster packs, no trading, no market. Seems swell, but it strikes me as more of a foolish move that sheds a lot of what makes the community so great. Let me explain...
A more rambly opinionated video this time while we transition from the Couch Era to the Wood Era.
Follow my Patreon!: / kohdok
Follow me on Twitter!: / kohdok
#tcg #tradingcardgame #gamedev #kickstarter - Hry
"You can buy in at any price point" ... unless you want to try and win. :/
...I mean... exactly? Not everybody tries a game with the intention of running top-tier competitive.
Pay to win is the opposite of competitive
@@Kohdoksure, but it feels cruddy to get steamrolled by someone, not because they're better than you, but because they have more disposable income. Or alternatively, to not be allowed to participate in things like Friday Night Magic because your deck has proxies, so if you WANTED to start playing competitively, there is a hard price gate. It doesn't matter if you're good enough if you can't pay the cash for your deck list.
This is sidestepping the anti-gambling argument you made. If your counter-point is "you can drop hundreds of dollars on the secondhand market, you never HAVE to buy packs, so it's fine!" I feel like you have succeeded in arguing why we don't need packs. They're just there to sucker in people who might have gambling addictions, or give people willing to shell out the big bucks someone to curb stomp with their monetarily superior decks. You're absolutely right, packs are an unnecessary tactic seemingly designed to trick and entrap people, we should just either sell individual cards or, alternatively, sell playsets of a set. Theoretically Wizards should make more than enough money doing that... Unless the main thrust of their income is secretly gambling addicts.
As a consumer, I get the appeal of the "trading card game" without the trading, as I can't afford the buy in that a lot of TCGs demand, and I don't like the FOMO that comes with buying or missing booster packs. I think you're right in that the correct way to create and market a TCG without the T would be to deliver on experience. A TCG without the T is a CG, a card game, and card games have existed for millennia, people still play with a 52 card trump deck today, and I'd love a game that delivered that feeling of playing yugioh or pokemon or magic but that can also be a complete experience with a single deck (or 2 players with each a single deck). Related, I have played Keyforge, and while it meets most of the wishlist, it still feels like it's missing something
Epic provides a Magic-like experience out of the box. You can also link up with me to play my game online, which is the second game featured in the video! It's been likened to a tabletop version of Pokemon VGC.
Have you considered Weiss Schwarz? Technically a TCG, but the purchasing pattern is very finite. Sets are locked to license, so you aren't obligated to buy every set, and the alternate rarities soak up most of the value so you can buy base rarity for cheap (relatively speaking). Like, for roughly $200 you can buy a playset of an entire set (minus some promos, which are usually... not good) And that's everything you'll need unless they make another set for that license a few years down the road. And, obviously you can just buy the cards you want, but I keep having buyers remorse when I don't just buy everything, so...
Alternatively, Millennium Blades is a board game about playing card games, that crams an entire professional career into one play session. WAY off from what you're talking about, but a neat concept.
Actually, that begs the question, what IS your ideal buy-in level?
>it's missing something
A community in my area D:
@@ccggenius I've heard of Weiss Schwarz, seems like my kind of game, might have to look into it. Maybe buy a hololive set to play.
I've played Millennium Blades, it does a decent job at simulating that TCG experience, but it's very high concept so you miss out on a lot of the minutia.
I guess my ideal buy-in is around LCG prices, $50 to $100 depending on the game. I've bought Pokemon and Magic cubes just to play, I feel like $5 for a booster pack of like 10 cards isn't substantial enough
What about Garfield's newer game Mind Bug?
I'm beginning to question if the game I'm making is even a tcg anymore.
Interesting. Are you planning for a print and play version of it or a demo built in Tabletop Simulator?
"Okay so hear me out. It's a trading card game, but without...cards!"
@@andrewsparkes6275 im making a "quesadilla" but without ... cheese
@@andrewsparkes6275 Pogs then?
@@ShadowEclipex No cardboard at all! We're throwing away all those outdated ideas people thought they knew about TCGs! No cards, no paper-based products INCLUDING the packing, we're not selling boosters and won't even have any rarity system at all! It's a brand-new model that's gonna take over the entire system of TCGs!
no mention of netrunner? FFG stopped production because of licensing disputes, but it's thriving under the guidance of the nonprofit NSG. its one of the best games ive ever played!
Great game, but the business model meant that it was barely worth supporting for game stores.
@@gmeaki02 it's print and play. Money's tight right now for cardboard crack. I get that if game design is your bread and butter you want something that you can sell. But I can tell you that I basically never trade magic cards because I *maybe* crack *a* pack once a year or so. If I want singles I buy singles. The secondary market has effectively destroyed the "trading" community for me. For me, this is indistinguishable from an ecg except the prices on cards can fluctuate wildly.
@@gmeaki02 its always been more of a boardgame store sorta thing than card shop, though i think the way NSG schedules and releases netrunner sets is better for everybody. it's just 2 sets a year, just two purchases. the FFG put out a million little products and drown your store shit is the worst.
This has been on my mind recently. Something I was considering for my TCG project was giving a "playset" option for those who just want the cards but don't care about the flash, and "Collector Booster Packs" which are randomized but would have the rare variants, like hollows, alt arts, etc (maybe even some sneak peak cards for the next set, but that would be a careful balancing act).
To keep the playset options cost down, my current idea was to have them separated by factions. So you don't have to buy stuff you don't want to get the cards you do want. Almost like an expanded starter deck option.
I am far away from even getting close to considering publishing, but it is something that has been on my mind.
Edit: Noticed you replied to another comment that had a similar idea, looks like there is more I'd have to consider than I thought. Didn't even consider I could be treading dangerously close to the line of Gambling Laws.
This is a great idea, and I've been thinking the same too. We need more modular ways to collect cards besides booster boxes and structure decks. People are much more open to spending casual money on playset packs too. I was considering how selling singular cards directly at a markup could a good way to mitigate the second market too.
@@Yous0147 The 2ndary market is how games survive though. You don't really want to mitigate it.
Netrunner was cancelled but the community run successor product NISEI has been going strong for years using the same LCG model. It's got a strong community of players who just love playing the game and support the new releases regularly.
I'm somewhat supervising a new self-published german XCG/TCG as an art director to learn more about the whole production process and this is exactly what is its selling point: no pay-to-win, you can have all the good cards right away by buying a deck, boosters only for other artworks and soon foil cards. I keep telling the developer: you don't have a meta yet so you can't advertise it, in fact you're selling a beta of your game at the moment... the only reason I agreed to help him regarding the game itself and not personal gain is that it is acutally fun rules-wise and competitively. It is using 3D rendered images from a certain stock page and things like this scared away all my friends. The thing I contributed to it are artist packs with actually painted card art for the characters. Those are printed end of august and start being sold in september and I'm gonna see for myself right at a small tabletop gamecon how they are doing. I have the feeling this is the point when it starts being the TCG he is talking about all the time...
I'm still convinced making physical TCGs that live beyond year 2 is harder than nuclear fusion. (in reality, both have problems that can be solved by "nerding harder" but card game is much more multi-stakeholder and multi-discpline than nuclear fusion)
It's because TCG's almost all follow the same old MTG strategy of booster boxes and booster packs. No reasonable game can put that level of pressure on their players without it buckling under, except if you're literally some of the biggest game franchises in the world. There are more cost effective and consumer friendly ways to make a game that allows for trading to happen.
I'm just gonna add that part of the reason that FFG's competitive LCGs have fallen off while the cooperative ones have hung in there is that they can't balance worth a crap. Imbalance is less of an issue in a co-op game because as long as it isn't egregious, most people don't mind if they get a little extra help from another player. On the flip side, in a competitive game, people are going to eke out every edge they get, and you end up with a homogenous pile of mirror matches. It certainly doesn't help that FFG's policy is to errata instead of ban. I'm sorry, but I like my game pieces to SAY what they do.
I'd also add that their competitive LCGs even at peak operation were putting out cards at an absurdly slow rate, making meta shifts take even longer, which only highlighted the imbalanced game play further. When 6 months of chapter pack releases netted you about a dozen new cards per faction, it smothered any possible innovation.
Oh sweet Jesus, you're giving me flashbacks to the first year of FFG's Legend of the Five Rings: Scorpion and Phoenix as far as the eye could see. It was bad enough that the old-schoolers that migrated from the AEG version in my town were already Scorpion heavy, but with them being so goddamn powerful in the game?
I really wish there were an alternative to both TCGs and XCGs. I like the customisability of TCGs and the volume of new stuff per semester, but I at best don't care about collecting cards, different rarities, opening random boosters, etc.. There are also many things I dislike about XCGs, the main one being that they force you to acquire cards you don't care about to get those you want and smaller expansions. The kind of "alternative" model I keep thinking of involves people being able to buy exactly the cards they want from a given pool of cards (a seasonal set, say). The great problem with this idea is the logistics of it - it seems to either require keeping giant inventories of printed products or some form of print-on-demand model, which are both inviable options.
TCGs already 'force' you to buy cards you don't need just to get the few you actually want. That's what opening boosters is all about, and it's actually worse than in an XCG as you end up with a bunch of useless pack filler or cards from unrelated archetypes you're not interested in while still having a chance of not getting the cards you were actually after, specially if they are rare.
An XCG can solve this problem with preconstructed decks for archetypes and small thematic staples sets which drastically reduce the amount of unwanted cards. Staples sets by definition, will always be useful to any player while preconstructed archetype decks are tailored for specific players, and although the latter might occasionally include a few cards that see use in other decks, you can still get those playsets exactly how TCG players do: by trading. Not everyone uses all of their playsets anyways. And if the cards in question are so good that they see use in many different decks, they probably shouldn't have been released in a structure deck but in staple set and should probably get a reprint soon.
The real challenge of XCGs is keeping the competitive scene thriving with innovation because they can't rely on collectors and gambling addicts. Archetypes must be carefully designed to favor variety and customization despite the higher availability of the strongest cards which might result in rampant netdecking and quickly solved formats. Fortunately, that's what banlists are for.
At that point just play an online sim live DevPro
The interesting thing you miss is that:
1) boosters are already acquiring useless cards for a small chance of acquiring a good card.
2) it would be cheaper in the long run for your pocket to just buy a small set to acquire few cards than to hunt the cards in market and having to deal with rarity and overpriced stuff.
It also is interesting to note that if so many trash useless cards didn't exist in typical TCGs, the decks would be able to have more resources and more possibilities of deck building would be possible.
So, you could have 2 or 3 decks if you wanted and so you would see more value on premade sets.
What if you make an ECG with a competitive nature and release a "Collection Set" at the end of each season? A season could comprise of 3-4 box sets released throughout the year. At the end of the year a Collection set will be released featuring all the cards from the card sets, except they're purchased in randomized booster packs. Then players can decide to buy the whole the collection set or booster packs at game stores for a chance to get cards they already have, but with new artwork. These collectible cards will follow the same rarity system of existing TCGs (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra Rare, etc.). What's more, players have a chance to get copies of certain cards that they want without having to invest in another the ECG box set.
Everyone will have the cards they want already. It's sort of impossible to have both random and non-random products unless the non-random is a selective sampler like a starter deck.
@@Kohdok I see. So you don't think my idea would satisfy the TCG collector types? I had the idea of starter decks having exclusive cards, but that alone I don't think would be enough for collectors.
@@Kohdok I know the new digimon card game does something similar to my idea by offering alternate artwork to their cards with special holographics and such too.
I think it's more that you're taking a product with broader appeal and trying to split it into pieces. Nothing about the non-random product appeals to collectors at all, and I don't think the scant few random packs you would provide would be enough enticement to convert.
@@Kohdok You make a fair point. So what I've gathered is that if you want to make a competitive card game it needs to follow the TCG model like the Big 3?
Random packs are a scam and gambling. If your game doesn't function without them, your game shouldn't exist at all. I say we ban packs.
I agree with the sentiment (unlike Kohdok), as I think any exchange of money for a randomized reward can be considered gambling (otherwise, loteries are not gambling); but I think the correct response would be regulation, not a direct ban. As kohdok says the model does have advantages and does lead to the existence of experiences that are not easy to replicate otherwise. That said, I woudn't be surprised if there was a way to replicate the price structure of a tcg without copying the distribution method, although building a comunity would be harder and dedicated work needs to be done for it to not be all competition
@@pgp1558I feel the advantages and experiences unique to trading card games that can't be replicated elsewhere aren't unique to TCG's. They're identical to the unique highs and lows of gambling. The things you lose when you take the packs out of TCGs is the gambling-but-legally-distinct part.
Sure, you can go to the secondary market to compete, and if you don't mind dropping often $1,000+ on a single competitive deck, that's fine. But I don't know, maybe that's not good, that that is the price to even have a competitively viable deck. And at that point, if you've gone to the secondary market to gather the parts of that deck... Why are we still defending packs? The argument for why they're good and ok, actually, is that you don't have to interact with them if you really don't want to. How many videogames can you think of that have been ruined using that as a shield?
In addition, as far as proxying and such goes, that worked really well with my friend group until they started playing tournament and some of them started making a lot more money. Suddenly it became a lot easier to win if they enforced essentially competing against their wallet first, and their skill second. I gather that happens to a lot of groups. Not to mention there is a social pressure, almost a shame, to your friends who can afford to go to a tournament with their official pretty cards because of some lucky pulls, and you, playing with photocopied cards over basic lands.
So, you're banning all draft formats?
yes @@Iceykitsune
@@Iceykitsune If one is that desperate to draft, you can replicate that experiance yourself. It in no way requires randomized booster packs. There are multiple board games based off drafting that don't have any boosters at all.
Thanks for the 'Table Politics' description, that's the core of my Game.
I think it'd be interesting to build a game around decks instead of individual cards. You buy a box of 80 or so predefined cards, and then you use them to build a 60 card deck (with the extra 20 for customization/sideboarding) and then that's all you'll ever need. Instead of adding new cards to slot into existing decks, each future release is an entirely new deck bringing a new archetype to the format. I've seen party games do something like that (Villainous, Red Dragon Inn, etc.), but I've never seen a competitive spike-y game take that approach.
That comes with its own problems of course (the decks have to be robust enough to not get boring, and new decks have to be compelling while matching the power level of what came before) but I think any attempt to make a game that functions like a TCG without the structure of a TCG is going to have to make big changes like that.
That's kind of how the XCG I am working on would work. There is limited mixing and matching between decks, but for the most part, each individual deck stands on its own.
I think I have a good for living card games.
make it draft able and sell booster with alt arts, rare treatments etc.
can have some new draft only cards that don't affect the meta.
another game mode, get the collectors horny.
I have considered doing a "collectors booster pack" thing for my CG concept as well.
Making a card game draftable seems like a good idea. You limit the card pool, so players will have to change their strategy per competitive season. This also gives players the incentive to buy the newest product in order to compete in tournaments in spite of it not being a TCG. The tournament win can earn a cash prize and one of first collector's boxset of that new season.
I’m trying to design a card game as a fan thing rather than as a product, and have been trying to follow your advice on it, but I keep rubbing up against problems. Part of it has to do with it having to be a Tabletop Simulator game due to me not having anything required to make it a physical print, so I can’t exactly make booster packs. I’m considering making it more of a pre-made deck based experience, but I don’t know how well that will hold.
Something I’ve also come across is that trying to make a unique card game system where you don’t move the cards around is incredibly difficult, mostly because a lot of it has already been done at this point. I’ve kind of resorted to that, but have tried to keep it constrained to around the space a Yu-gi-oh game takes place in. Again, it has to exist in Tabletop Simulator, so I don’t know if that helps anything. It’s all a bit frustrating.
This kind of card games already exist (and are already thriving to begin with).
It's called dedicated deck card games (that can be expanded).
One problem with Uno is how standalone its variations feel. Not allowing different versions to be mixed together.
I think you should do a video on yugioh's speed duel product, because that's been their attempt at dabbling in the space.
I'll make a TCG, but without the T, is tedious, also without the G, I don't like games, and without the C, cards are for boys. And I'll call it NFT
...But that has a T in it...
@@KohdokGot em
Anyone know the name of the 4th game (right after skylanders) with the 4x5 pan flag of a board? id like to check it out... Card back looks like it says "Astra Myth" but i get no results... even on the Tabletop Simulator workshop page on steam
ECG seems like a "excape room" would be a thing.
"You can't copy the TCG experience"
Thank god. Because it is shit.
TCGs are 100% like playing a chess game where one side wins because they bought 8 queens.
LCG are more like being able to organize the pieces however you want.
"People won't get into competitive without randomness"
Bro, competitive players and communities don't exist because of randomness and trading. They exist despite these things.
"People won't buy the next big thing"
This is not an issue of TCG or LCG. But about balancing the game and creating power creep.
FYI, Sound was great on my end, didn't notice a difference.
I agree with everything you said here. It's interesting that we haven't really seen any ECG style games come out digitally. I know the LOTR one didn't make it for a few reasons. I can't really think of any others unless we go down the roguelite route where I guess it gets kind of murky, but I think there's a space there for sure, especially for the kind of games you talk about with grids and boards and moving pieces.
So my case and many people I know, the T in TCG is a detriment in people playing at an LGS. We want to play, but can't due to the high price tag. Then in casual play, we almost always lose to the friend with the biggest pockets, which is a toxic experience. We even tried putting a price cap on the games for casual, but certain friends got butthurt over attempting to level the play field.
Now when we were younger, before the online single stores, trading was fun. In modern times, it is simply a boring transaction that isn't taxed. That's all, nothing more than that. Every modern day trade I have seen is always the same, "lets look up the price on these cards." When I was younger you might get a second opinion asking a friend "how good do you think this will be for my deck?" Trading happened due to perceived play value, or popularity of a character for things like Pokémon.
What I find funny is that you left out the extreme popularity of Android Netrunner. This baffles my mind to have a video about ECGs, without bringing up the one with the highest popularity of any ECG, past or present. After WotC refused to renew the license with FFG, it was picked up by NISEI, a non-profit game company. It also astounds me that you left out Ashes Reborn. Ashes was brought back through the PDP model and has an online free to play virtual space, known to the company, but 100% made and run by the community. These days both Ashes and Netrunner can be played competitively for free.
You bring up the barrier of entry, but fail to bring up the extremely common two tournament types, so common I can't think of a single ECG that doesn't do this. One tournament is core set only, then the other is everything else. Every ECG has at least these two formats. So you have a competitive scene for just ~$50. Even Spikes like the core only format because they like to show their skill off. Meta even shifts in the core only format if the ECG is built well enough.
You say that ECGs are pretty much only for Spike, and that is flat out dead wrong. I mostly resemble a Johnny, and much prefer ECGs over TCGs because I know that each card was more closely fine-tuned to get to be more balanced, the one exception is probably FFG's LCGs. ECGs give me more useable game pieces to work with without having to sift through as much junk. Most TCGs are unbalanced all to hell, most of each set is unusable crap.
Big fan of the channel. Ive always wondered what category you would put games like Warhammer and mech warriors. Id also would love to hear you talk about Final fantasy TCG and Panini's DBZ tcg game
It's possible for a competitive ECG to exist (not necessarily spike-y but as in the opposite of cooperative) but ECGs are too narrowly thought of as TCGs with no T. Dominion, Smash Up, and even Uno could be thought of as competitive ECGs. The core element is that they are more like board games with a box set experience for everyone rather than ones that have personal decks that each player owns. Instead of shoehorning the TCG model into an ECG, the most successful competitive ECGs have just been board games that use cards and follow a board game's expansion model.
Great analysis, thank you for that! I reached a similar conclusion and designed Gemwielders, my dueling deckbuilding game, accordingly. The Core Set has two characters and a deck of 60 cards to build your deck out of, consisting of 5 gem types. You can get new Gembearers (playable characters) as expansions or add new gem types (coming soon) that increase variety by allowing new combinations of 5 gems to make up the gem card deck. I would love to hear you thoughts on this approach.
I wonder if it would work to create an hybrid? Like, a game where there's a central component, let's say a character, that you just buy as-is, but then you have boosters for the rest of the cards, like equipment or moves, with compatibility making an impact on desirability. A game with a very minimal deck size. All the characters could be roughly balanced against each other with the boosters providing the power creep but still letting you field your favorite character?
Artificial scarcity within a game presents a fun challenge, but in real life, it's an evil that's largely responsible for the most heinous atrocities of our world.
People come together in wonderful ways during disasters, but that doesn't make disasters desirable. The community formed around the scarcity of the TCG market is likewise a silver lining in a dark storm of manipulative profiteering.
How about a trading card game with units that has more attack choices, like Pokemon.
I made mine, 4 types of units, you got your basic, still trying to figure out the other, and one called a Waker which is basically evolution but different, and then there's Habiles, Habile meaning skillful, with their base attack (which I would call melee like fist to fist depending on the unit), and they also have another one in the text box, some grant effects while others are just there, no resource grind like Pokemon, if you follow my game's resource is a bit like MTG, Once a turn you may put any card face up in your pool, you may play cards that have a level equal to or lower the amount in the pool, all cards must use 1 resource to play, attack, or use abilities if they call for it, example: I have a L3, L4, and L5 card in my hand, and 4 cards in my pool, I may play the 3 and 4 but not the 5, also like MTG there are 7 colours, which means you must play a card that's the same colour as the one in your pool, white cards are omni so you can play them or use them in the pool for any colour at the same time. How ever many cards you want to play is dependent on the amount of resources in your Pool that is not exhausted.
Back to combat, use one Resource to attack, but you can block without a resource freely, I also added a depth feature.
The feature I added recently is basically different attack types:
Melee, standard, not special.
Range, may attack and not get hit when attack (it's like MTG both parties take damage), but it does take a hit when it blocks, it can also attack specific types of units like Flyers, and only takes damage when attacking if the other party is also a Range or another type I have.
Spiritual, it's attack is decided by a 🎲, and additional and subtraction is decided by coin (if you don't have a coin roll a 🎲, 1-3 is a minus, 4-6 is a plus),
Roll 1. 4
Flip, Heads = plus
Roll 2. 3
Sum is 7, if it's a unit you're attacking or being block it becomes a 700, if your opponent is being attacked it just becomes 7 (first to get their opponent to 30 wins, it's reverse MTG).
And Environmental, basically whatever attack your opponent chooses in battle, like the base attack or a Habile attack it's also your base attack, you basically copy cat your opponents chosen attack if you know what I mean.
This is a fraction of my game, but how does it sound so far? I want dynamic tactical depth unlike other games, where you win by skill and not some YuGiOh Wombo Combo Best Meta Archetype.
I also want all my cards to be atleast a bit useful.
Now for relevance for the video, if I would be in the market, the best thing to do is make them cheaper than the other competitors but not too cheap to feel like its weak, then, give more cards at the start of the run, because I'm already out numbered by time. Like 2 decks in one box in case your opponent is new, 12 or 24 cards in the booster but those cards are all useful at the start, deck guides and rule booklets will be in all decks sold.
sounds complicated.
Honestly, I think that although your points are pertinent about the strengths of TCG's, I feel like no real TCG out there follows through with the promise of T in the TCG anyway. Trading does happen for sure, but it's commodified in a way that doesn't foster community but rather can end up killing everything but the most competetive aspects of the game. Random booster and loot boxes aren't the only way to facilitate scarecety and economy between players, rather they're the most effective way to stoke a hyper market that's entirely focused around chase cards forcing more sales of booster and loot boxes.
That sort of setting is oppresive to everyone who isn't a dedicated player and it's even less tolerable now with the alternative games and other media you can readily consume instead, it's why only the biggest TCG's can function with that kind of business model without going under. Basically, the idea of a TCG that traditionally sells boosters is moot in a sense because it's not feasible unless if you've got a million dollar franchise lined up and even then it's more often a loss lead anyway. You end up having to pad out your product to justify the sale of a booster with chaff common cards that hold no value in the game other than being unusable noise, just to have the excuse of why people need to buy into the price of a booster.
Randomness in some sense is fine, but you also needs sets and packs that give you packages of cards you need, something cheaper and more modular than an entire structure deck. You could even modularize random boosters so they tightly follow the same theme, giving you something readily playable and usable after a couple of packs, ideally where each card has some purpose in play or trading. The pull rates on most TCGs is beyond ludicrous if you consider money spend to purpose. A great way to mitigate the secondary market is to sell cards to your consumers directly (card for card) at a reasonable markup, barring those cards that are extremely rare or even alternative arts, that keeps the secondary market reasonable reasonable too and facilitates trading for pleasure and need over commodity.
Can anyone tell me the name of that game at the 3 minute mark, The Trading Scene. Can't read the name in the upper left. Thanks.
wow, he made monopoly sound so good with that short summary
Oh! I didn't know you played Sentinels! Friend got me into lately great game. What do you think of Elestrals Shattered Stars subscription?
I’ve been juggling if I wanted my card game to be a TCG, an XCG, or something completely different, and I finally think I’ve settled on something. I think ultimately, an XCG model just works better for mine. You’re only suppose to have one of each card type (one monster called ___, another called ___, one item called ___, etc.) which I just don’t see being feasible with a TCG. My card game was always built around being a more friendly experience, one central deck we all draw from, and one which is just left up to random change. I’ve tried making it as a TCG and it just doesn’t seem fun that way.
I wonder what you would think of Millennium Blades
I agree on this. I was really excited about Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn when it first came out, largely because it was an ECG (and the rad art). But then I realized I would basically have to commit to buying every product, because there would be no way for me to get only the cool cards I liked. I got into MtG just buying the cards I wanted to build a deck I thought was cool, and there is no way to do that with an ECG.
It should be possible to do, one just need to pack the expansions more granular so people can choose the cards they want to buy in to.
@@AlphaSquadZero In theory, yes, you could go down that route. However, once you start packaging such tiny "sets" you probably run into production issues.The cost per card is going to increase a lot because of packaging, shipping, graphic design etc. That could really hurt the marketability of your game as well.
On the flip side, while you're committing to buying every product, that still only amounts to like... $15-20 every few months. I WISH TCGs were that inexpensive.
@@ccggenius Depends on the game and how you want to play TCGs. If you're not competitive, just picking up a few cards here and there TCGs can be cheaper. As Kohdok points out in the video, the problem is designing an ECG thinking you're making a TCG. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to design a competitive game, so I a TCG is my baseline.
I like that with Ashes there is ashteki which lets you try out the cards in a real game online without needing to purchase them. I' buy only what interests me most, but then I get to play with every cool card online without having to purchase, which I think is pretty unique to ECGs. Course, online play is not for everyone
didnt know about this event, would've loved to watch the matches!
9:12 Man, I miss V:TES, such a fun game but getting a play group together was harder than finding a willing bloodbag.
Thanks for the video Kohdok.
pokemon "live" has no trading, and its really, really a big problem, grinding to get cards is required to play .. but it was that way before, and there was a LOT of crap trade offers - BUT you could offer up a trade that you found to be worthwhile, and it would be taken, most likely - and that reduced the grind of the whole thing - now - that's gone. Poof. Only way to get cards? Play. Play. Play and win. SIGH. Oh and only 2 dayly """challenges""" to do. :/ I mean.. I'm playing it, but I'm also complaining about it!
I haven't had any issues with being unable to play the decks I want. The free battle pass is VERY generous. Like, at the start of the season they just hand you a pile of the best cards in the format.
@@ccggenius It would be cooler with trades :D old system had trades.
my 10 years experience with ptcgo was great and it allowed me to have all the decks i ever wanted. sad they removed it in the new game.
But collecting a playset of every card is so much easier when the product just comes with a playset of every card.
Much less expensive too than cracking infinite packs
Thoughts on VS System 2pcg? It's been around since 2015.
Always the biggest funny part about all the hate for the T in TGC is that everyone seems to forget the it started with TC's and that the G got added in with rules beyond just playing with the player's Stats
I m still playing star realm and there are the impression of novelty with the boosters extention inside a competitive format. Ex est the deck is for everyone. I think they should make more initial decks with original rules for more interaction between players
What do you think on a TCG whose randomized cards aren't rarity based, but just an equal odds all round?
It's annoying enough in the Pokemon TCG when you need to slide a pokemon and all attached energies, dice etc across the table to retreat it. Now imagine having to do that every single turn to move cards around on a battlefield
One of the 2 big problems the game has. and one of the reason it works better as a digital game.
What if you sell packs with proper rarities, foils (maybe even a signed card by the artist here and there) but you also offer, on the side, a "print on demand" playset of your expansion with no rarities, no foils, no fancy nothing just for those interested in deckbuilding and theorycrafting?
At that point you're setting a price per card, which can run afoul of gambling laws.
@@Kohdokcould you possibly elaborate on that? Would the packs of foils, alt arts, signed cards, etc not count as different cards than the plain normal art base set?
I think you're entirely wrong about Table Politics; case in point: Magic: The Gathering, a member of the Big 3, has it's ***main format*** so heavy in table politics that there are entire strategies deemed "Not acceptable" & there are almost as many slightly different variants as playgroup. You know the "Delete Blue" people, they only exist due to the overly social nature of Commander
Is it not possible that a card game with no trading built in on purpose could still develop a trading community?
Let me think of an example… well, it’s not a game unto itself, but minifig collectors and painters. I don’t know if it’s a community, but I would not find it surprising if people who end up disappointed by one model traded with someone else.
Nah, collectors are dumb and chasing a dragon's tail. They also make TCGs more expensive and, even if cost wasn't a thing, harder to play for both casuals and spikes. You want to own one of every Homarid? Print them out and frame them so that people who want to actually use them can use them.
TCG companies: "The secondary market isn't real, it can't hurt you."
If you're planning on making a competitive card game without the trading component you *might* be better served going digital. The initial buy-in required from players can be much lower since you're not worrying about printing and shipping hundreds of cards along with any peripherals your game requires, you can add expansions to the game that don't put pressure on retailers if they don't sell, and you sidestep the main downside of digital TCGs: You can't collect, display and trade a digital product. A lot of the flaws in ECGs are mitigated by a digital release.
Hell, card games might actually be uniquely suited to mobile devices: bring your phone instead of your deck, create or join a local lobby and just play the game with people in the same room as you... and giving players the option to host games that other new players can join for free would be a great way to get new people into the game.
5:32 - What IS this game on the screen??
See, I’m a player who prefers stuff like Epic. I don’t need an XCG, just the single box. I don’t want new stuff. I don’t want the bar moving, ever. I want a fixed set with pre-set and fully tested balancing.
I’ll be real I forgot the T in TCG meant trading so I saw the tile and went “without the… “the”??”
TCGs can even offer the feel of an ECG with things like cube drafts. I’ve considered buying cheap booster boxes of dead TCGs to make a few cubes but am unsure what games would work well and still have affordable market prices (duel masters seems to run high for a box these days for example) but plenty of still supported games can be cubed relatively cheaply and give that feel of an ECG so I agree it really doesn’t have much viability in the market
TCGs can also feel like ECGs if the preconstructed decks are varied enough and can stand on their own. You could play Yugioh with only buying structure decks.
@@Stinkoman87 I haven’t given Yugioh much of a shot but I’m definitely interested now
Versus system!
there's very little point in trying to compete in the tcg market, there are much better funded, better marketed and more well established ways for people to still do that without your game trying to be a part of the big three and getting smashed into the ground for your efforts.
Pretty much this: TCGs aren't realistic without major corporate backing and potentially an already established IP to springboard off of. All of the TCG player money is already in other TCGs, and pulling people away from games they've spent *literal thousands of dollars on* is just not going to happen without doing something BIG.
Legend of the Five Rings' biggest problem I don't think was stripping out a lot of its content so much as it had other problems, the world ending on us being the big one, since it shut down organised play.
The 'fate' system of your cards disappearing unless you sunk more resources into them was a classic example of 'confusing interesting for fun or good', because as you've pointed out, people want to PLAY with their cards. When I'm already sinking my entire income for a turn into getting Hida Kisada onto the board, I want to to be able to bust skulls with him good and proper, not see him go away at the end of turn!
The other big problem I found was that so often you could find yourself in a position where a player has functionally won the game on turn one, and yet you find yourself forced to play out the remaining three or so turns (looking in your direction 'Display of Power' as the number one culprit). Its a deeply negative play experience that I saw drive away more than one potential player.
So as others have said Android Netrunner was enourmously successful until WoTC pulled the licensing plug on it. Game of Thrones went on for 7 years as an LCG. Now granted both are no longer played but both lasted longer than many actual TCGs that have released in the last ten years. Secondly Keyforge isn't a TCG and has not only survived a near extniction, but is about to be funding its 8th set this month. So not having a T in the card game is not actually a problem, its the quality of the underlying game.
Wait, Kohdok, you described around Baltimore as being "close to me", are you Maryland native?
This is a harsh reality for me. I really like the ECG model, it appeals to me a lot, and I ideally wish I could release my game as one someday.
Do you think there is a middle ground between TCGs and ECGs? maybe a way to do TCGs while dealing with some of the criticisms it gets...
Maybe I just had the wrong places, but it always seemed to me like competitive was the only real part of the scene with actual momentum anyways. Certainly, my local Friday Night Magic was pretty much entirely helmed by the sort of players who just went online, theorycrafted a decklist, and then bought the singles. I respect the collecting and trading aspects of TCGs, but they honestly seem to fall off as community-participation elements as soon as people have jobs. Your friend's card that you want, valued at $20, could lead to heavy negotiating in a trade... Or you could just go spend $20. Every TCG player I've ever met once we were out of the schoolyards just did the latter.
I remember growing up. There were a lot of kids who got ripped off, accidentally trading away a great card for 3,5,10 mediocre cards; because they either didn't know what they had, or they were pure pressured into doing it.
So I could see how getting rid of the trading aspect in a tcg seemed like a good idea.
I personally feel like TCG's where you play to win are a bit more problematic.
I feel like I've said it before, but I feel like this kind of product would work a lot better in a digital space. You already have a lack of trading, and all cards are acquired through some sort of dusting system. Personally, I'd still have boosters as an option so as not to get rid of F2P players, but I'd shift those boosters to focus on the cosmetic aspect somehow.
You just described ccgs
Rading Card Games
You conveniently didn't mention any of the bad things that come with the Trading part.
Board games are an insanely better value for those not interested in the community aspect of TCG's. I just love cards and the games they create, so I can't help myself, but I know I'm a pathetic addict for buying any of this junk.
Rare cards don't cost any more to print than dirty commons. We're all a bunch of suckers, and our weakness is being exploited horribly.
If you were right, a game like chess could never have any community. Because it is the opposite of typical tcg in every sense.
Imo, you were very badly treated by tcgs for a very long time that you got used to the abuse and now think it is good.
Most proper TCGs with Ts are bad and we can't even play them. Exactly because it has randomness and depends on other people.
Card games with T are fundamentally a bad formula because it depends on a lot of external factors to be enjoyable in a casual level.
That's why it is immensily easier to play ccgs which are digital.
total bullshit
people do not trade cards anymore and selling randomized lootboxes is not community building. its literally just a lootbox system the provides a secondary market where some people jack up the price of good cards, a good game doesnt need to gate off some of its cards to make playing fun. people who play cards games in the current age do so on fan made online clients where all cards are available all the time.
"By removing the trading part you lose community"
So you transformed something that should be about fun and games into p2w. Where who has more money wins because they have the best cards. No more or less.
A gap between casual and meta is artiicially created. A
The whole boosters system exists to sell booster for whales. Not to increase public or create the best quality product.
What in God's name are you blathering about? This is a physical Card Game, not Overwatch.
@Kohdok I am talking literally about how TCGs transform a game into market. Where you need to spend money to have power. This fact is what makes tcgs die.
@Kohdok overwatch it not even p2w. Lmao. At least fps are about skill.
You guys trade cards? Man, humans are crazy these days.
You can always play "TCG without T" by just printing the cards
I quite agree with your analysis. There are so many jokes about MtG destroying your financial situation. People jokingly compare the card game to drug. It's all fun and game, but in the end, I spend way less on MtG than on my regular board games. You are absolutely right that people can choose to sink as much money as they want into this sort of card game. You can even pay next to nothing using proxy if your group allow it. The T in the TCG is never as evil as people always make it out to be.
Yep. Gambling addictions are made up, everybody knows that! /s