I am interested in this. I am going to make some comments, and hopefully they make
any sense to anyone but me. :V
Design Rule #1: Attacking is easier than Defending.
Offensive cards are more common than defensive cards. Of the two basic actions, Shoot! and Graze!, Shoot! is twice as common as Graze!
In total, the cards that could be considered Offensive versus those that could be considered Defensive is a ratio of 60/40.
This rule keeps the game moving towards an end. The average game of Danmaku!! with brand new players will last 40 minutes. Experienced players can expect a 15-20 minute game.
Keeping the game moving toward a conclusion is important, and one of the trickiest things to balance right. On one hand you can weight offense more heavily than defense to keep the game moving toward the end, but on the other hand you can use a comeback mechanism to prevent snowball victories. Would you say that your game has a comeback mechanism? Sometimes in social games like this comebacks are self-balancing because players who get off to a slow start don't get attacked and players who get too powerful have everyone gunning for them, but are there any other mechanics of effects that work to balance games ending too quickly? Especially with the power of some of the artifacts it seems like sometimes players can get off to significant runaway leads.
Design Rule #2: Use CCG rarity.[attach=1]
Even though Danmaku!! is not a CCG, the chances of you getting a super powerful card on a draw are rare. Cards designated as Rare are 12.5% of the deck, and there's only one of each, so relying on them isn't a good idea.
Shoot! cards make up a whopping 30% of the battle deck, with Graze! cards being the second most common at 15%. Both of these cards allow you to spend excess Shoot! cards for extra options, either extra range or team defense.
Bomb and Power cards also considered Common. Power because it can be "shot off" of your character.
Bomb is one of the best cards in the game, but it's common because:
"I can think of nothing sadder than playing a game without getting to use your spell card." - Carrot
Spell cards have big effects and are fun, so we want people to use them. If you count Capture Spell Card, cards that activate your spell card are the 3rd most common card in the battle deck.[/quote]
I think this is the most interesting idea here. I have a few reactions to it. First, it kind of goes against my gaming sensibility to make powerful cards lower frequency, since it increases variability in a way that I would think makes the game more luck-based. It sort of works in this game because the rarest cards aren't necessarily the
most powerful (see bombs), and the ones that tend to be (the artifacts) are visible so players can gang up on the lucky ones accordingly. Still, the "strictly better" thing, especially with the card draw cards, grates against all of my gaming instincts a little.
Second, I think the comparison to CCG rarity only sort of works. It obviously makes the parallel between Danmaku and a sealed card game (one in which players get all of their cards by opening packs at an event, so everyone in theory has the same number of random cards of each rarity). Since in a constructed game (a game where players build their own decks out of cards they already own and bring them to games) rarity doesn't have an actual gameplay effect in most games. Just because a card is rare doesn't mean you'll see less of it in a constructed game (in fact, it often means the opposite), but it does in a sealed game.
What do you think of this parallel? If we are comparing Danmaku to a CCG does it play like a sealed game? On one hand the low frequency of rare cards is like a sealed game, but on the other hand the limited card pool is like a constructed game, where players tend to focus on the best cards in the environment (as opposed to sealed games where players have to make use of a wider pool of cards, using even sub-optimal cards because they simply don't have as many cards to pick from and can't afford to min-max as much). Beyond rarity do you see or intend any other similarities to CCGs? The different characters remind me of the avatar cards in games like the World Of Warcraft CCG or the Vanguard format in Magic, but beyond that I'm not sure where the actual gameplay similarities begin and end.
Design Rule #3: Choices choicesBoard game enthusiasts will tell you: it's choices that make a game interesting. Many Danmaku!! cards force you to carefully review your options.
Do you use your extra Shoot! cards to attack a far away player? Or do you save them for a time when you have more information or are faced with a Challenge?
Do you want to Seal Away or Borrow a known card on the table, or a hidden card in a player's hand?
Master Plan can reorder the top three cards of any deck, which deck do you want to reorder?
Do I
really want to Challenge Tenshi? It's like arguing on the internet.
What about Kourindou, Fairy Wave, Last Word, Tempest, and Party? How many of these players are my allies and how many are enemies? Should you play them now or wait till the situation changes?
[/quote]
I like games with a lot of choices. My very favorite games tend to be the ones that look on the surface like they don't have a ton of relevant choices, but the more you look at them the more axes of choice you begin to uncover (the best example of this in my opinion is the board game Seasons, which at first glance could almost be accused of playing itself, but the more you look at it the more the dizzyingly huge number of choices that effect the game becomes clear), and I think Danmaku sort of fits that mold.
A lot of those choices have to do with the hidden roles, which makes holding on to cards for late in the game when you have a better idea of who has which roles a possible choice pretty much all of the time. One of the complaints that some of the more casual players I played with the few times I've tested the game was that they didn't understand what they were supposed to do early in the game before anyone knew the roles, but that's kind of an important part of the game and I can see why it might be intimidating. That element of hidden information exponentially increases the number of relevant choices you can make, and that's interesting but also potentially confusing.
