@JC - Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet design question

Plastic

I'm just wondering why you (guys) didn't keep the effect of zombies AND vampires on him like paper. It would open many more cards to be played with him that probably rarely get played to begin with.

For reference:

Paper Version

Morphis

With the addition of so many vampires recently such a change in fact would affect the card value a lot.

Since for being a mythic I find it a little lacking and paper version supports this change... Why not?

I got it yesterday so my position is a little sided

Jazzpha

Could be that tying two different conditional abilities to one set of activated gems might be a bit complex from a coding standpoint, or that the idea of voluntary mana payment is tricky to convert into PQ terms.

I could see something like an effect similar to Sphinx Tutelage working, though. Activate the gem, then you're given a separate choice as to whether or not to sacrifice a vampire/zombie to buff Kalitas. Also similar to the way targeted spells function.

But yeah, if that secondary effect got added, he would be a major force in my black vampire deck-- provided I ever opened him, of course hahaha.

Morphis

Jazzpha wrote:

Could be that tying two different conditional abilities to one set of activated gems might be a bit complex from a coding standpoint, or that the idea of voluntary mana payment is tricky to convert into PQ terms.

I could see something like an effect similar to Sphinx Tutelage working, though. Activate the gem, then you're given a separate choice as to whether or not to sacrifice a vampire/zombie to buff Kalitas. Also similar to the way targeted spells function.

But yeah, if that secondary effect got added, he would be a major force in my black vampire deck-- provided I ever opened him, of course hahaha.

Basically the mechanic is already translated in our version.
It's just that vampire is left out.



It should just be reworked as "activate 3: the first zombie or vampire other than itself gets -2/-2....."

Jazzpha

Morphis wrote:

Jazzpha wrote:

Could be that tying two different conditional abilities to one set of activated gems might be a bit complex from a coding standpoint, or that the idea of voluntary mana payment is tricky to convert into PQ terms.

I could see something like an effect similar to Sphinx Tutelage working, though. Activate the gem, then you're given a separate choice as to whether or not to sacrifice a vampire/zombie to buff Kalitas. Also similar to the way targeted spells function.

But yeah, if that secondary effect got added, he would be a major force in my black vampire deck-- provided I ever opened him, of course hahaha.

Basically the mechanic is already translated in our version.
It's just that vampire is left out.



It should just be reworked as "activate 3: the first zombie or vampire other than itself gets -2/-2....."

Oh, good point! Yeah, you're right. My fault for not seeing that-- whoops!

Hibernum_JC

Sorry guys, I just saw this thread and I can actually easily answer this.

The plain and simple answer is that the current tech doesn't let me do "Target first creature other than itself". I won't go into crazy detail as to how the cards are built, for obvious reasons, but the fact of the matter is that I just don't have the tech to do that.

I can target the first creature of a specific type, but if that type includes itself, then it will trigger and target itself. At the moment, I can't exclude the ability source.

So I had 2 choices - either redesign the card entirely (it's happened before when cards are completely incompatible with our systems) or print it with a slight change, which is it can't target Vampires.

We sadly only have so much bandwidth for things like this, and when you're developing a game, hard choices come by. I've been doing this for many, many years, and every single team I've worked on has had to make difficult choices regarding some features. When the choice is either that goes in (for a single card) or something else goes in (for multiple cards), the answer will almost always be to pick the feature that will affect multiple cards, because it's just much more cost-effective to do so. That doesn't mean the functionality will never be there, it just means that we couldn't put it in due to other things taking priority.

We're not like paper Magic where we can just print whatever we want - it's not just words on a card, it's also the logic and functionality behind it. And while some of you may read this and say "wow, that's super easy, I bet I can code this in 5 minutes!" - yes, you might be able to do it quickly in 5 minutes. However, that 5 minutes exponentially explodes when you factor in other cards this may affect, QA time spent on those cards, unknown interactions that may occur with this particular effect, etc. As the game gets more and more content, especially with this type of game with loads of possible interactions, every change like this that doesn't have a wide impact on the game has to be carefully weighed in around what it actually costs to put it in, debug it, QA it, debug it again, etc. It's a very complex process that takes a lot of time and manpower, and it's not trivial at all to do.

Plastic

Thanks for the response. I wasn't really calling anybody out as being a slacker or anything, just wondering why it didn't include both creature types. Obviously you have the answer while we can only speculate and assume things.

Hibernum_JC

Plastic wrote:

Thanks for the response. I wasn't really calling anybody out as being a slacker or anything, just wondering why it didn't include both creature types. Obviously you have the answer while we can only speculate and assume things.

Oh I know you weren't calling us slackers! I just figured it would be more interesting that just saying "I couldn't do it" and leave it at that. I know a lot of people (not you nor anybody who posted in this thread, really) are armchair game developers and often do not understand the realities of game development so if I can help some folks understand the different disciplines and time that is required to do some rather basic things it's worth the effort on my part.

Jazzpha

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Plastic wrote:

Thanks for the response. I wasn't really calling anybody out as being a slacker or anything, just wondering why it didn't include both creature types. Obviously you have the answer while we can only speculate and assume things.

Oh I know you weren't calling us slackers! I just figured it would be more interesting that just saying "I couldn't do it" and leave it at that. I know a lot of people (not you nor anybody who posted in this thread, really) are armchair game developers and often do not understand the realities of game development so if I can help some folks understand the different disciplines and time that is required to do some rather basic things it's worth the effort on my part.

This is why you're an awesome developer, JC. Keep up the good work!

And yes, actually hearing the rationale behind design choices as explained by someone who Knows What They're Doing is always interesting. Learning something new is never a bad thing!

andrewvanmarle

@ JC: What about changing the creature type of the kalitas card?

If he isn't'a vampire anymore, then he won't'target himself.

I don't'think there are any other interactions with vampires in the game (yet) are there?

khurram

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Sorry guys, I just saw this thread and I can actually easily answer this.

The plain and simple answer is that the current tech doesn't let me do "Target first creature other than itself". I won't go into crazy detail as to how the cards are built, for obvious reasons, but the fact of the matter is that I just don't have the tech to do that.

I can target the first creature of a specific type, but if that type includes itself, then it will trigger and target itself. At the moment, I can't exclude the ability source.

So I had 2 choices - either redesign the card entirely (it's happened before when cards are completely incompatible with our systems) or print it with a slight change, which is it can't target Vampires.

How about making it something like "target vampire or zombie you control gets -2/-2 and this creature gains+2/+2"

I am totally fine the way this card currently is btw and dont know anything about game development and programming so any answer is welcome ☺

PapiLouis4

khurram wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Sorry guys, I just saw this thread and I can actually easily answer this.

The plain and simple answer is that the current tech doesn't let me do "Target first creature other than itself". I won't go into crazy detail as to how the cards are built, for obvious reasons, but the fact of the matter is that I just don't have the tech to do that.

I can target the first creature of a specific type, but if that type includes itself, then it will trigger and target itself. At the moment, I can't exclude the ability source.

So I had 2 choices - either redesign the card entirely (it's happened before when cards are completely incompatible with our systems) or print it with a slight change, which is it can't target Vampires.

How about making it something like "target vampire or zombie you control gets -2/-2 and this creature gains+2/+2"

I am totally fine the way this card currently is btw and dont know anything about game development and programming so any answer is welcome ☺

the ai is so dumb that as an opponent, the ai would probably always targets itself, resulting in nothingness or maybe even death.....lets just leave it as it is for now :shrug:

Hibernum_JC

There's 2 suggestions in this thread that I want to address - Changing it's type to something else than Vampire is a possibility, but the problem behind it is that if there are any Vampire interactions coming the future, I wouldn't want to neuter this card and make it not interact. (Considering the next set in paper Magic is very Vampire-themed, it will surely come up).

The other suggestion is to make it manually target something instead of doing an automatic targeting thing. The reasoning behind that is that whenever an action does not come directly from a player casting a card, we do not want to use manual targeting. Doing so slows down the game flow quite a bit, and constantly interrupts you during phases where we don't want you to be interrupted. It's not like paper Magic, again, where it's okay to do these things, but in our game being interrupted like that really breaks the flow of the game and just slows down games quite a bit.

khurram

Hibernum_JC wrote:

There's 2 suggestions in this thread that I want to address - Changing it's type to something else than Vampire is a possibility, but the problem behind it is that if there are any Vampire interactions coming the future, I wouldn't want to neuter this card and make it not interact. (Considering the next set in paper Magic is very Vampire-themed, it will surely come up).

The other suggestion is to make it manually target something instead of doing an automatic targeting thing. The reasoning behind that is that whenever an action does not come directly from a player casting a card, we do not want to use manual targeting. Doing so slows down the game flow quite a bit, and constantly interrupts you during phases where we don't want you to be interrupted. It's not like paper Magic, again, where it's okay to do these things, but in our game being interrupted like that really breaks the flow of the game and just slows down games quite a bit.

It should remain as a vampire. There already arent enough of those in the game for my taste. The card is okay as it is. ☺