@Sokolov Introduction Recently, as we're all aware, Pox Nora has been in a transition phase. It has changed companies, changed head designers, and been revamped. These all have been positive things but they have also started a lot of discussion about the current state and future of Pox Nora. As I've read these discussions I think most of the issues with Pox Nora that have been discussed all relate back to one thing: Design Space. What is design space you may ask? To me, design space is the areas and parameters of a game that a designer may develop in. This is important to understand because design space is used to define the basic and advanced concepts of a game as well as used for balance purposes. Today I'd like to show how I think Pox Nora could better use design space. (Note: I will be making examples of abilities and types of design space that could be explored for the different factions/themes/races/classes. I will not be assigning costs to these abilities or using numbers because I want the focus to be on the ideas at hand, not about balancing them. The balancing part would be if an ability such as that were implemented. Thank you.) Resources During this post I will be making many references to Magic the Gathering as well design space as a concept. Please use the following articles as resources to find some of my source material I will be mentioning: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68 http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/261 http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mm/state-design-2014 http://www.zenofdesign.com/understanding-design-space/ While there are many more on this topic I felt these would assist me in showing off some of my points today. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Piece of Eight Currently I believe Pox Nora has a very vast amount of design space. So why this discussion? I believe that currently this design space isn't being used correctly or to it's full potential. In Magic the Gathering the game is divided into a color pie of five separate colors. Each color has it's own section of Magic's design space so that each has it's own set of strengths and weaknesses. Cards in Magic are cast using their resource cards, called mana. There is a separate mana for each of the colors. This allows the designers to balance the game because you may include as many colors in your deck as you wish, but, you must have the correct colors of mana to play the cards in your hand. This means single color decks are more consistent but have their specific set of strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, multi-color decks have access to more powerful abilities but are inconsistent. I don't think Pox Nora currently gives each faction it's own section of design space to work with. I think if the factions were looked at to assign design space that it would allow for more focus in design as well as promote synergy in full faction and split battle groups. For example, let us take a look at Forglar Swamp (FS). Let us refer to the Pox Nora faction overview: "The power of the Forglar Swamp lies in the wisdom of the ancient Boghoppers and Firk that have spent centuries protecting and nurturing their fertile waters. The main attributes of Forglar Swamp is their manipulation of water, the strength of their healers and their ability to extract additional Nora from the land. If you enjoy small, mobile units and elemental based spell-casting, Forglar may be the faction for you." Alright, looking at this it would seem to list that FS should currently use water terrain based abilities, healing, nora generation, mobility, and 'elemental based spell-casting' as it's sections of design space. Now looking at these I would assume that FS would use a lot of mobility and healing to stall the game and use the nora they generate to win by 'elemental based spell-casting' and using water terrain. I am not going to speak to whether or not the faction currently accomplishes these goals but rather point out examples that do not fit these criteria. First example, the Jellebrium. Currently their ability, Jellebrium Mind, reads as such: When this unit is deployed, a revealed rune in the opposing rune dock has +2 cooldown for each friendly unit with Jellebrium Mind, including this one. At the beginning of its turns, for every 4 runes your opponent has on cooldown, this unit is healed for 2. It also gains a rank of Teleport for 1 turn if it is a champion. This ability has primarily to deal with cool down reduction. Now, while the healing and teleport granted by this ability do seem to fit with the outlined design goals for FS the cool down reduction is a part of design space they dip into. The second example, the Snaptooth. Murkwater Frenzy reads as: This unit is an AmphibiousCarnivore. For each friendly Snaptooth within 4 spaces, this champion gains a rank of Multiattack. This currently allows units to heal and gain AP from hitting beasts, gain multi-attack and be amphibious. Now, healing and amphibious both fall into the FS design space. On the other hand, the healing being situational, the AP gain, targeting beasts, and the multi-attack do not. In addition, amphibious is an ability that is already on most units in FS. This means that Murkwater Frenzy doesn't really seem to follow the Swamp's design space at all. My third and final example, the Salaman. Currently Salaman do not have an ability that tie them together. This is fine because in Pox Nora every race or theme does not need to have a single ability to unite them. Instead they may have a certain style of play or design space that they fill. Unfortunately the Salaman don't seem to have that. Out of 12 Salaman none of them really seem to have a single part of FS design space they fall into and they all don't seem to even have FS design space. Most of them just seem like a way to grant certain abilities and champion builds into FS even if they don't fit with the identity in design space FS is supposed to have. Now, looking at this you can see that there is an issue present with how design space for the factions are handled. I have not went into every faction to see how they do or do not fit and I am not going to. I am sure some factions fit more into their design space and I am sure certain abilities every faction has. But the issue here is that design space isn't being assigned and followed for the factions. This makes it harder to see how the factions will play against each other as well as together. While it is fine for colors in magic to dip into parts of the color pie they normally do not use for a reason (such as an ability that every one gets or a cycle of cards that they make) they generally avoid it because it can cause balancing nightmares and chaos for game design. The same issue is present in this situation. I believe that a faction should have certain parts of design space they are allotted so that way those parts may be fully explored and fleshed out. To continue with our example, let us look at FS again. Let's say that we want Nora Generation to be something that FS is first in. That means that no matter what factions can generate nora that FS will always be first in it. When you assign a specific part of design space like this you can then start to develop and expand upon it. Let us say for this example that they want to take the boghoppers and expand on the idea of them being from the swamp. They decide to flesh out the trope of Voodoo and superstitious remedies associated with the swamp in folk lore. They could give abilities to bog hoppers that allow them to have a more powerful effect because they cost nora to use. For example, they could have a heal variant given to bog hoppers called 'Apply Swampwasp Ointment'. It could allow a unit a heal that leaves a buffer afterwards or just a stronger heal than normally gotten. This could cost a certain amount of nora to use so that it is optional and does not need to be used but allows the Swamp to take advantage of their nora generation when they have excess. Continuing with this example, let us say we wanted to take the Firk and allow them more abilities such as Mastermind. This works two fold. FS already cares about Nora so them having abilities that depend on the nora you have is already in their design space. This means that you could shoot for enough nora generation to increase the cost of your Firk. This means that those units would be more powerful but you would still fall in the nora range needed to activate these abilities. Now, this is where design space pays off. If you choose to have Firk focus on 'nora amount matters' abilities then including bog hoppers that can use extra nora with their abilities allows them to be synergistic with each other while still maintaining their design space. This is an example of a direction I'd like to see Pox Nora move in so that a design space is used to flesh out the design space of a Faction as well as cause synergy and consistency with themes, races, and classes in that faction. Soultapping, The undead, and The Trail of Shame Pox Nora currently has a large amount of aspects to it. This isn't a bad thing but it can cause design space to be very hard to identify and even harder to stay focused. As we have already discussed if a faction has it's own design space that creates a trickle down effect. This means that if you know the design space a faction has access to then you know where to take the races, classes, and themes in it as far as design goes. One of the main issues I see is the separation of these three and the lack of expansion given to each one. Let's look at some examples about how these sections of design space differ and how they are the same. We are going to start by looking at Boon of the Undead. For reference, here is the faction over view for Forsaken Wastes (FW): " Diseased zombies, undying liches and risen corpses comprise the never-ending undead army of the Forsaken Wastes. The Forsaken Wastes faction has the ability to overrun enemies due to its low-cost champions and its ability to quickly summon units back to the battlefield once destroyed. If you enjoy playing a slow developing but never-ending army of undead champions, The Forsaken Wastes may be the faction for you. Note: Forsaken Wastes tends to be best played by more advanced players." Now let's look at Boon of the Undead. "This champion has Immunity: Disease, 40% Poison resistance, and Fearless. When this champion recovers a nora globe, you gain an additional 20% nora." The first thing of note is that Forsaken Wastes seems to really only sell two things with it's faction overview: The units are slow and that they prefer attrition. Let's look at Boon of the Undead now. First, the issue I'd like to point out is that while it is a very flavorful ability it causes a lot of balance problems. Any units that deal poison damage or disease damage will always have an uphill battle fighting against these units. Also, any type of battle group that focuses on fear for it's abilities is also at a disadvantage. Personally I am of the mind set that one ability shouldn't hurt or hinder three other types of battle groups. But even more than that, the design space stinks. Nothing about FW seems to imply that they care about being damaged because they plan to swarm, so defensive abilities do not seem to be a part of the design space that they would care about. Secondly, this already places FW as a whole into Nora Generation as a section of their design space. This means that going by the faction overview and the racial that FW seems to have a clashing view of design space. But if we look at the font and faction bonus it would seem that their design space would fall into cool down reduction for creatures as well as preventing the casting of opposing spells. In a situation such as this it really leads to a position that anything else that is added to this doesn't seem to follow a clear purpose or focus other than throwing undead units at the opponent. But on death and on play abilities would seem to be the clearest avenue to support this. Sticking with this we will move on to what might be referred to as a theme ability while still staying in FW. Zombie Apocalypse counts as a theme ability and not a racial ability because only certain zombies have this. For reference, here is Zombie Apocalypse (ZA) in it's current iteration: While you control at least 5 Zombies, this unit gains Swarm: Festering Corpse. Now if we look at the faction overview again it says that low cost champions and the ability to quickly summon units back to the battlefield once destroyed are two of the design spaces that FW fits in. It also references a never-ending army of undead champions and slow development. If we evaluate ZA based on this we see that it is a slow development and it can create a never-ending army of undead champions, or at least as many as your opponent deploys opposing champions. The issue comes in that the faction bonus wants your units to die, while Boon of the Undead wants them to live, and their low cost wants them to be replayed over and over again. So now you have a mash of abilities that don't directly support you swarming with zombies or sending them to be killed. In this instance the racial that ends up on most zombies conflicts with the theme ability and they both don't reinforce a general direction for the faction to head in. Let's move on to the final look at class, once again staying in FW. This time we'll be looking at the witch class. Currently in Pox Nora classes as a whole aren't developed a lot and don't seem to have a general guide line as to how they should function. Because classes aren't usually restricted by faction like races are it makes it even harder to balance them because you have to find a design space that fits multiple factions as well as the goal for the class. Currently witches seem to focus on units being cursed. Let's look at their class ability that some of them can elect to take, Elsari Coven. It reads: Whenever an opposing champion is deployed or enters a friendly Dead Magic Zone, it becomes Cursed for 2 turns for each unit Witch you control. The issue with this as a class ability is that it first doesn't work well with cross faction synergy. The reason being is that you have to take an FW witch with the Coven ability to gain any benefits and no other faction has a coven ability for it's witches yet. In addition it implies that you want to use FW for the dead magic zone and for any rune that interacts with cursed. While this is a good design as far as encouraging synergy in abilities and runes it is a mess for design space once again. The faction bonus doesn't help if you want your witches to stay in play. While you may be able to play them again sooner it does nothing to help them survive. Also, because most witches are human in FW they lose access to a lot of the abilities that the undead units bring to the table. This causes a friction in the faction. Looking at this it would seem that the best way to handle design space for races, themes, and classes would be to outline what each wants to accomplish, how many factions they would be in, and to find an overlapping design space. For example, let us say that we want to look at the Lonx in Savage Tundra (ST). Currently they don't have a racial but instead seem to favor logistics abilities. Let us say that logistics becomes their racial. They could have abilities that trigger if a unit achieves logistics or that trigger on deploy. This, along with their logistics abilities, would create a situation in Savage Tundra where the Lonx value high health because they want to live long enough to achieve logistics. This would also allow their design space to dip into something such as scry and make it more meaningful because the order you deploy units in would matter more if they were more reliant on logistics and enters the field abilities. Moving on to themes we can look at trolls. Currently all but I believe one troll has access to rock defiance. For reference, Rock Defiance reads: When this unit is successfully attacked, this unit and friendly units within 6 spaces with this ability has +1 DMG for 3 turns and gains 1 MAX HP permanently. This shows that Trolls favor the phalanx strategy that IS seems to lean towards. They also favor abilities that interact with being attacked. Let's say that we took this one step further and made them based on buffers. A troll unit would be able to place a buffer on a unit to absorb damage and grant abilities or boosts to units with buffers. This would promote synergy in the faction with other boosts/buffers/defensive abilities and would even allow IS to favor buffers as a part of their design space because they so heavily feature the trolls. Also, other faction trolls would not need it since buffers could be an attribute of IS trolls and not trolls as a whole. Finally a look at the already mentioned witches. An alternative to their current set-up could be that witches had familiars that grant certain witches a one use ability upon entering play. This would encourage that witches use non-witch units, which could easily be extended to races such as beasts, that can be in multiple factions and it would also allow the FW faction bonus to come into play where most witches are centered in FW. Avengers Assemble!!! Wait, what?! As I've addressed all the other topics so far one of those which seems to be mentioned quite frequently is design space for the factions. This includes their font bonus and faction bonus. Recently a discussion was had on the forums about these bonuses and what they meant to the game as well as what would result from lessening their influence. One of the issues with these bonuses is that it is hard to balance them against each other because they are free bonuses that apply to all the runes you deploy, from the same faction or not. This is what causes faction bonuses such as Forsaken Wastes' to seem like they don't influence the board as much because they don't have a direct effect on the field but faction bonuses such as K'thir Forest's always plays a part because AP is something used every turn and a vital resource to the game. I think the best solution to fixing this would be to move the bonuses from the fonts and factions into the runes for that faction. This would fix the issue of K'thir Forest runes not splitting properly as well as focus design space for the factions. If FS wants to be focused on nora generation it is better served as abilities and runes instead of a slow gain of nora they don't have to pay for. This also means that it removes the headache of trying to balance these bonuses against each other and actually moves the cost into the runes where formulas already exist. Also, to comment on those who say this would decrease diversity or lower the faction's identity: Your wrong. The whole goal of this is to move the faction's characteristics (such as nora generation, high health, speed, etc.) into the factions that way it is an active part you see when building your battle group and playing the game. Often a faction bonus is negligible when building a battle group. Instead you focus on the runes available and that guides your decision. Moving these characteristics into the factions means that faction identity would be relevant in all parts of the decision process and not just some. Finally, I also have another suggestion for what could replace Faction Bonuses that would help further design space. In the miniatures game Heroclix there are different teams you can choose to build, such as the Green Lanterns or the Justice League. When building your team there are additional team abilities. These abilities are generic, or for a specific team only, and may be taken as part of your team if you pay the cost. I think if you could find a way to have different 'faction bonuses' that are select-able in game by paying a nora cost or by paying so much from your starting nora amount then you could add another dynamic to the game that the bonuses are present but balanced to a cost and selected based on the battle group your playing. This allows design space to focus more on making sure each battle group fits into it's own design space to allow a unique experience with every battle group rather than trying to pigeon hole all of Savage Tundra into the same bonus or giving Forsaken Wastes no option other than having dead magic zone as a font bonus. The opposing Shrine is almost destroyed!!! The final topic will be why is all of this relevant to Pox Nora and why does it matter. The answer to that is simple. Pox Nora currently has an issue with it's design space due to complication and power creep. Unlike Magic the Gathering Pox Nora has no version of rotation. This means that when an ability is placed into the game or a rune is made that it is always affecting game play. What this results in is that if your looking for AP generation in FW then you look to Mobilization. The only way to replace this is to give them access to better AP generation. This is what can contribute to power creep. In addition, units not having a clear focus or design space to fall into is how runes end up with so many abilities and factions end up being homogenized and having access to the same effects. If design space was looked at and developed across all eight factions then it would allow each faction to have it's own strengths and weaknesses so that they could be balanced with one another over time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you to anyone who has read this far and I hope that we all can contribute to this conversation and that it leads to a better present and future for Pox Nora. I apologize if any ideas need explained better or if I worded anything incorrectly as it is late. Please keep the discussion constructive and hopefully we can all work together to have the Pox we all want. If anyone would like to contribute ideas or add to the discussion feel free in the comments. Also, if you would like me to provide more examples or better explain anything I spoke about ask in the comments or message me. Thank you, Rawrdotcom
It's great to see people show enthusiasm about design. MTG design articles are a source of great inspiration; I remember sending Sokolov a excited PM years ago with links to several, as I used to read them daily. The folks behind MTG do, however, have a particular philosophy, which is by no means universal. It is one they have employed in their particular game to great, if qualified, success, but it holds certain warrants and assumptions that are neither necessary to design nor always beneficial. You present a couple design interpretations that I think are ill-founded, specifically, they are not an accurate assessment of the present Pox situation, even in the context you use. I'll leave those aside for now, as there are more important points to hit: the underlying design philosophy for MTG has flaws; Pox is fundamentally different from MTG in ways that exacerbate these flaws in addition to producing new ones. That is not to say that what you put forth comprises the entire design ethos of everyone behind MTG (that would be quite a feat). I am respond to the MTG design philosophy with which I have experience, and the slice you have presented here. inprogress
Based solely on your Forglar Swamp details and your lack of understanding there with how to utilize design space, I stopped reading. Look at what you did; you took subraces, sidenotes that play to a larger theme of the swamp and its denizens, and declared them "outside the pie" just because they didn't conform to a 3 sentence blurb written before the snaptooth had evolved past a single unit, and the Jellebrium even existed. You actually took the OPPOSITE of the concept of design space, by firmly insisting that every part of a faction should play into the same themes and functionality, and limited the potential that could be found within the swamps. The point of design space is to find and develop common themes that can allow you to expand upon your base. If you force everything in a particular fashion to focus on a few key aspects, you're actually cutting off avenues of design. The snaptooth are actually an awesome example of creative design; they took a single release-set rune, expanded it into a racial theme, and made a very cool option for Forglar players who didn't feel like being "nora, efficiency, and water" that day. The snaptooth all feel like they are crocodilian, an obviously very swampy race, and really bring out the dark, inner depths of the murky, shadowy regions of Forglar. They even conform thematically to the concept of building, wearing down your enemy, that you discussed as one of their central tennets - they all have some form of incorporeal trigger, like a crocodile sliding back into the water, and build to a frenzy as more and more gather for their prey. It is swampy, it is flavorful, and most importantly, it is totally Forglar. What you're doing is dismissing an important half of design. While yes, it's important to follow themes within a faction, you also need to look to the flavor of the faction, and expand from there as well. Leaving either one to the wayside is to do the game a disservice, and do the very thing you say you want to avoid. The snaptooth? Totally Forglar, and an opportunity to expand design. The Jellebrium? Totally unique, using a unique power, and also contributing to that concept of delaying your opponent. TL;DR, your examples contradict your point, and make your wall of text read not so great. I'm sorry that you put so much effort into it, and I couldn't get past your Forglar stuff, but honestly, to initiate a design space discussion and kick it off with that, I couldn't keep going. That doesn't mean there are no problems or missed opportunities, but you started barking up the wrong tree.
I think the OP is lamenting the transition from faction based to theme based identity. but it was the only way the game could grow imo.
That was really long, man. I would say that your points were well made and included many examples. Your voice really shined here. However, you could have made your point more quickly using less examples and evidence. As a reader I really wanted it to end about halfway through. Fortunately, I mostly enjoyed the experience. For now, let me say that I absolutely agree that there is hidden design space that has not been met, which seems to be the crux of your argument. As per your example of FS, there are certainly many more ways of generating Nora then have been explored. However, I would like to point out that the newly released Firk certainly generate Nora. I also take issue with the idea that each faction needs to fill its original role and not anything else. To me, appearance matters more then play style in this regard, though I would prefer a general soft adherence to each factions original playstyle.
In the effort to cement faction identity don't forget that it's okay for ideas to overlap between factions as long as they're implemented differently. For example in MtG Blue is most well known for drawing cards but Green and Black are also very good at it but rather than just draw you cards Green draw is based on the Creatures that you have in play and Black draw power requires that you pay life. A Pox example of this overlap that I think is appropriate is that FS and IS both have healing in spades and Wrath factions don't really ever get healing except something like Fire Acolyte where you get to heal by damaging your opponents which is flavorful in the context of UD. Also, @Ragic is right, we are moving towards thematic identity which I'm generally fine with with the sole problem that there's not alot of exclusivity from a theme standpoint. To use the Mobi example every FW theme is going to run it whereas before the use Mobi was limited to one identity.
we've started to see theme specific (even champ specific) spells, relics and equips while the older crutches are slowly getting nerfed out of existence. mobi could easily have been made more theme specific. that would actually open up MORE design space as now all the other FW themes would have room for a mobi type spell. and you can decide what themes need ap gen and what themes don't. and this is also why the faction bonuses should be removed. more design space, better balancing, more flavor not less. see Burns posts about how SL all plays the same way. perhaps because of their powerful crutch spells and powerful bonus. remove the bonus and make those spells theme specific, the world opens up for SL
The issue with the Magic vs Pox comparison is the game play. Pox uses a map based game play that fundamentally ties resource management with board positioning in order to persuade active play. This brings positioning and map control elements into effect. This is the reason why the Strength-Weakness dichotomy does not work in Pox. Effectively, every weakness you have between runes is magnified, because if one player capitalised upon a weakness not only do they benefit from the tempo swing, but they also benefit in resources. Add to this, “play from hand” runes must be limited as they have such a large impact on fonts (think blink). This in turn limits the comeback mechanics and the shoring up of weaknesses, as it is too easy to simply turn these effects around into offensive pushes. Magic and other games like it (like Hearthstone, even though people may not like the comparison) can use the Strength-Weakness dichotomy mechanics because (i) board presence in itself does not have an impact per say and (ii) they can also implement board-wipes or “play from hand” mechanics. As stated, Pox cannot. The “Development Space” of pox is fundamentally constrained by this aspect of its game play if balance is to be sought after. Restricting themes to rigid descriptions gives rise to the Strength-Weakness dichotomy and therefore fails (think traditional UD vs KF). What this means is that, at their roots, each faction needs to have a common base line that can answer everything. Each faction needs shatter, detection, comeback mechanics (like champ control elements), melee tanks, range/engagement options etc. Themes and flavour are secondary elements that must build upon this base line, not alter it.
iow Pox is more of a strategy game than a tcg game. thanks for saying it in a smart way. I would also add that a factions 'flavor' comes more from its look and its lore, not the way it plays. At least now it is. FW at one time was the attrition faction. but attrition is not how every FW theme plays these days hence its faction bonus is outdated. But the undead are still the undead. People who choose FW do so because they don't want to play fairies in the forest. They want to play scary undead. In a regular TCG if your deck becomes weak you are expected to shift with the meta. Not just complain that your deck is no longer viable. In the early days of pox your deck was basically dictated by your faction. so when one faction became weak, players didn't just shift with the meta, they complained that the game wasn't 'balanced'. With the shift to themes this becomes less of a problem because its easier (or at least more palatable) to shift within a faction (go from skeletons to zombies for example) because youre still retaining a 'faction identity' that is supported by the look and the lore.
Not sure if the first line is sarcasm or not, but I'll accept it on its face value; you're welcome. And I believe it is possible to have flavour beyond aesthetics. Take healing, while I would say every faction should have access to it, there can be considerable game play differences between Divine Favour, Holy Ground, Acolyte, Soul Challenging, Blood Balls, Regen, Heal Champ, Cleanse based healing, Blessed etc.
im not saying that flavor cant be expressed in gameplay mechanics. im saying that a majority of new players who choose FW would do so because they are a fan of vampyres or the occult, not because they are a fan of the blood ball mechanic. also note that blood balls are not a faction wide healing mechanism. So if they ever do nerf blood balls those players could shift to playing witches to get their occult fix rather than demand a buff to blood balls or quit.
I understand your point now and agree, people are originally attracted by looks but I feel mechanics and needed for long term investment. And blood balls was in ref. to UD. FW would be Forsaken Exploit and maybe soul channeling (wrong spelling before it seems) for Spirits in the future. I like the idea of "Condition Based" healing for FW (i.e. inflict condition X on enemy, heal from it in some way).
I used magic as a comparison because you used magic to make some of your arguments, I was under the impression that you valued it as a comparison metric. Also the argument that tempo doesn't affect magic is false. Also Pox has an equivalent for the "play from hand" cards in magic although there's little in the way of field wipes but field wipes are just a mechanism to enable the control strategy which exists in Pox as well as Magic. Examples of Pox Control are things like certain variants of Spell Spam and Magnetic Rover AP Denial. To @Ragic's point I think that the gameplay flavor of many factions have changed and I agree that faction bonuses should be edited to reflect the current state of affairs or removed and give the deck identity fully to the themes.
