I would argue that mtg has a great catch up mechanic. The purpose of a catch up mechanic isn't to punish players for winning or make only the last turn matter, it's to make being behind not feel miserable. In mtg's case, being behind doesn't feel miserable because you can potentially draw the out or the winning player can potentially run out of gas.
wouldn't that apply to any game? if anything, it would apply less to MTG because you have a higher likelihood to not draw the card you need, due to the mana system and only getting to draw 1 card. also doesn't really apply as a catchup mechanic either, since the player who is winning gets to do the exact same thing.
No even remotely decent player is struggling with “the mana system” in MtG’s late game. If you’re past turn 4 and you can’t get your lands’ colors to line up with your spell’s colors, you’re just a bad deck builder. A lot of the mana problems you hear about in magic are legit coming from bad players who can’t figure it out. The issue with Magic’s mana is mana flood / mana screw mostly in lower powered formats. It’s not color issues. Magic’s comeback mechanic is its massive card pool where you can choose to play cards that scale when you’re behind at the cost of not being able to snowball wins easily.
I remember when this article first came out in 2013. It's a great little piece of reading. I particularly like that it's written for children. It's so simple that I can show it to anyone and they'll immediately understand.
Mark Rosewater has an amazing use of language and story telling. It makes him so easy to listen to (like his drive to work podcasts) and I love bouncing off of his material because he sparks new ways of looking at things.
Many of these points were questions about my game that I avoided answering for the longest time. Now that I've had more and more conceptual development and playtesting, I feel that if each of these challenges can be met, I have a high chance of having a solid game... hopefully.
I'm happy to hear that you are taking on these challenges. It can feel as though it is a gigantic mountain to climb, but just take it one step at a time and keep grinding away. You sound like you have the right attitude, keep it up!
30:49 I made it to the end lol and thanks for another great video, I have gotten a whole Lotta ideas from this, mainly on a catch-up mechanic 😅 and some other things, even though it’s going to be hard to explain these ideas to my co-writer aka my Daddy because he is not so much of a gamer, so he doesn’t really understand some of the lingo when it comes to games lol
"The 'stick needles into your face' game, as an example, is probably never going to catch on." _The BME Pain Olympics would like to know your location._
Realistically newer players have one of two ways of learning. A friend, or some friends teach them. Other than that it really is kitchentop friends reading the rules and replayhing their first game halfway through
about the first goal, I'm making a game about capturing monster cards, and though all players win by capturing monsters, and it's will always be like these, the way, which and how many monsters you have to capture depends on you "leader" card, think that as you hero on FaB. is this a rigid enough goal? since the alternative win condition are all written on your face AND it doesn't change througout the game, and you know what evry player is doing since the beggining, or is it just confusing and abstract for nothing?
You've kept your rules plain and simple and then you've added complexity with the cards you've created. You've done it the right way! Players will spend 5 minutes looking at rules and 5 hours looking through your cards to build their ideal deck. It is just how we are wired.
If you can sell 1000 cards. Where every single card has a purpose in some deck. Then sell each card for 20 cents. In a variety of packaged sets without duplicates. The use of durable card stock/plastic. You may attract players that will be willing to shuffle cards without sleeves. Interchangeable rules for the different small sets that add change, and can be dismissed if a set deemed unbalanced. If players are spending time writing down deck concepts. Then, playing solo practice runs. A debate on how they are able to achieve meta. This adds to the value of the cards. When players are able to compare the money spent on the enjoyment. When both planning and playing. You may see people buying replacement cards after several hands are played.
"if your game isn't fun, people won't want to play it" sadly this is not always true, there are a lot of gacha or paytowin game that make players feel to be forced to play even if they don't actually enjoy that game
It's a tough grind to stick at your tcg till it picks up some interest. I haven't done research on this, but I would think that WW2 is more of an older generation's interest. When TCGs will normally cater to a younger audience. I'm not saying that there isn't any cross-over, but your target audience (WW2 fans) may not also be regular TCG players.
It is like you said there are many WW2 fans. Don't be demoralised, by my opinion. Just make the game you love, and you will find those fans. I still think the crossover between WW2 fans and TCG fans is smaller than other genres, but that doesn't mean you can't deliver a great game to those fans and even encourage that fan base to grow in time.
