Gameplay discussion.

Pylgrim

Surprised there's not a topic yet for this, so here we go.

As a long time MTG player, I have to say I am extremely disappointed by the complete MTG-unlike disregard for the colours of mana you are gathering, simply caring about amounts of mana. The most puzzling thing is that Marvel PQ already uses colour-specific mechanics to great success. Rather than disallowing off-colour cards for the planeswalker you are using (say, Nissa, the starter one) and then pretending that all mana that you gather is green for casting purposes, you should keep a count of the different colours of mana that you are actually matching and then use them accordingly. Got a red card that costs 6 red mana? Well, make two red matches, etc. The proper way to do this is already so straightforward, so Puzzle Quest, that it's extremely baffling that they went with the convoluted mechanic present in the game.

The other flaw I see in the design is that matching is, other than a way of gathering mana, an entirely secondary mechanic, victory wise... but it is actually the bread and butter of the genre! However, due the limited size of your deck of cards, one convenient cascade that allows you to cast all of your cards will see you matching tiles every turn for no purpose at all, while you wait for your creature cards to trigger their attack phase each turn. Basically the better you play (or the luckier you get with falling tiles) the quicker that the most interesting part of the game is over and becomes an irrelevant chore.

Pongie

MtG player and iOS devices here so I'm locked on of this soft release.

Care to explain the game mechanics? A bit hard to understand without it. Never played the original puzzle quest and it seems like this is a lot different to MPQ.

I see card deck, spells and creatures being mentioned and form the limited screenshots I see, I still don't know how it all fits together.

On another note: one of my MtG friends is hooked on it already (after I mentioned it to him), but he never played any puzzle quest games before and just loves the MtG aspect of it. So it's hard for him to explain what's different compared to MPQ.

Pylgrim

You control a Planeswalker (Nissa, for starters) which sets down the cards you can use (only green cards). Planeswalkers also have a certain affinity for each colour, meaning that when you make a match of that colour you get X additional mana (0 additional if 0 affinity). You begin a match with a random hand of 3 cards from a deck of 10 and draw 1 per turn (you can have many more than 3 in your hand). There are creature cards, spells cards (one-off effects) and enchantment cards (continuous effects that are tied to a random tile in the board and need to be matched a number of times before being removed). The board is 7x7 with tiles in the 5 colours of mana plus "Planeswalker mana" that you use to activate your Planeswalker's own abilities. Those abilities are gated by level, you get the first one out of three at level 5, for example (you gain exp points to level up after winning a battle). Creatures go in a space above the board, you can have up to 3 out at a time. After you make a match (and whatever happened to the board stops) your creatures automatically attack the opponent for their power value. The opponent's creatures cannot block unless they have the defender mechanic. Damage dealt to creatures is persistent.

So far so good, right? My main problem is that cards don't have a "mana cost" but a "converted mana cost". Their cost is just a number and by making matches of any colour you get mana towards that number. The top card in your hand is filled automatically as you gather mana and then you have the chance to cast it, while any further mana is collected for the next card and so on. In other words, other than the "affinity bonus" there's literally no reason to pursue matches of a specific colour. I find this bafflingly both anti-MTG and anti-Puzzle Quest.

The second problem is that the only way to deal damage to the opponent is through creatures (though I guess Red and perhaps Black PWs get access to a few direct damage cards). You know how in MPQ you damage the opponent via tile-matching itself, via casting abilities and via special tiles, like attack tiles? Now imagine if you only could damage the opponent with attack tiles, because that's what creatures are, at the end of the day. Automatic sources of damage whose only upsides over attack tiles is that they are not easily destroyable tiles and that they offer a measure of interaction, being able to be blocked. But that's it, at least for the green PW. You gather some mana, you put down some creatures and sit down and hope that you can out-race the opponent's creatures. There are some other effects and things to do, but the path to victory is just that.

The third problem is the deck size. With only 10 cards in your deck, you not only don't have much room for customisation, you also go through them fairly quickly. Many times it happened that I got a big cascade, gathered a lot of mana and cast all my cards (leaving my three best creatures on the field, that is, while the weaker ones sat uselessly in my hand). Then I proceeded to have several turns of completely pointless matching tiles and waiting for my creatures to finish the opponent. When the main mechanic of the game (matching tiles) can become a completely useless activity, there's a problem with the game.

Unknown

As a long time MTG fan as well I feel your pain. The issue with mana color vs converted cost is an easy one. In game where tiles cascade randomly you cannot expect to run a green deck or any color for that matter and have a chance to win every game. If there are 10 green tiles on the board and no potential to match you're screwed and would likely lose the game. The converted mana cost is designed to keep the game objective while still somewhat sticking to conventions. Sure you could in theory create a 5 color deck but once again you are at the mercy of the tiles and may never get the matches you need.

Now for the deck composition and size, I agree to a degree. You complain about the big monsters that you have hit the field with little guys left to do nothing. To combat this you can change your deck composition to have larger monsters to combat this effect but you're going to be very slow to get guys out there. Unfortunately I don't think there is a perfect solution to this issue. Deck size on the other hand is something I totally agree with. 10 cards just seems too small, and I find myself going through them too quickly at times.

The last thing to keep in mind is this game is essentially in beta. Hopefully with time and critiques it will get better.

Pongie

Thank you so much for the write up. Makes it so much easier to imagine.

Pylgrim wrote:

So far so good, right? My main problem is that cards don't have a "mana cost" but a "converted mana cost". Their cost is just a number and by making matches of any colour you get mana towards that number. The top card in your hand is filled automatically as you gather mana and then you have the chance to cast it, while any further mana is collected for the next card and so on. In other words, other than the "affinity bonus" there's literally no reason to pursue matches of a specific colour. I find this bafflingly both anti-MTG and anti-Puzzle Quest.

A good reference for this is charged tiles. So planeswalkers have automatic charged tiles for their coloured tiles.

With regards to deck size, perhaps they should just do away with that in this game and implement a spellbook instead. So instead of unlocking cards and adding them to your deck, it's just simply added to the planeswalker's spellbook. Then to stop someone from abusing a particular spell, implement a number of turns cooldown and a hard limit of 4 times the spell can be cast (to try and mimic the game 4 ofs rule). In the end, the card game is just a way to emulate two planewalkers battling, there's no need for this game to try and replicate that game mechanic. It just has to keep to that overall feel and adopt the match 3 genre to fit.

Pylgrim

ImBrotherCain wrote:

As a long time MTG fan as well I feel your pain. The issue with mana color vs converted cost is an easy one. In game where tiles cascade randomly you cannot expect to run a green deck or any color for that matter and have a chance to win every game. If there are 10 green tiles on the board and no potential to match you're screwed and would likely lose the game. The converted mana cost is designed to keep the game objective while still somewhat sticking to conventions. Sure you could in theory create a 5 color deck but once again you are at the mercy of the tiles and may never get the matches you need.

Yeah, I guess this is true. Still, it doesn't erase the fact that matching tiles is almost pointless. There's barely any reason for 5 colours to exist. You have no colours to pursue (other than maybe the one with a strong Planeswalker bonus), so you the only thing you really do is check for 4-matches or the possibility of cascades, disregarding everything else.

I think that this game could take a cue from MPQ and allow you to have as many colours in your spells as you want. Maybe keep the bias to certain colours in the PW you are using, gently encouraging you to use a majority of cards of those colours, but still, having the chance to use any colour you want? No green matches in the board? Well at least the black or whatever other colour match you can make will allow you to cast other stuff. All this not to mention that if you use actual mana costs, you'll usually only need one or two green mana to cast a card, so a single match potentially will allow you to cast two or more cards.

Now for the deck composition and size, I agree to a degree. You complain about the big monsters that you have hit the field with little guys left to do nothing. To combat this you can change your deck composition to have larger monsters to combat this effect but you're going to be very slow to get guys out there. Unfortunately I don't think there is a perfect solution to this issue.

I think you misunderstood me here? I have no problem with creature sizes at all. My point is that it's boring that auto-attacking creatures are the only way to deal damage to the opponent... I mean, that part does feel like MTG... but for a match 3 game it's rather boring and un-interactive.