The Establishment of a Power Curve

Welcome Back Students! We discussed the introduction of a new resource system and some of you might be thinking, how does it feel? Well, it didn’t happen, and that was because of the cost of our cards. The main reason it didn’t work was because the costs were balanced with the old system. That may not be a problem to some of you, but some caught this and realized that the costs of cards didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the resource system made even less sense. Why did it feel this way? Because we never established a power curve.

Some of you may know what a power curve is, but others may not be familiar with this term. Essentially, the power of card is the sum value of its abilities and stats. Every stat and ability is assigned a value based on how powerful we think that stat is. We looked at the power curve of both fire and earth cards and spaced the power ratings in groups to determine the cost of cards ranging from 2 to 8. This new system can set the standard on all future cards and instead of balancing cards around the values, we can make cards based on the values. Either way, it allows us to keep to the current rules of the game and teaches us what cards will be overpowered and underpowered immediately. More playtesting will determine the success of our power curve, as will the feedback we receive from you!

In the past, we had a similar equation in place to determine card cost; the amount of dice used to play cards, which determined the power and cost. The problem was that we used it as a guideline instead of a rule and changed card cost based on what we felt they should be. Doing this broke the rules of the entire game because we broke the power curve. This may seem strange and still may not make a whole lot of sense, so I am going to give an example that should hopefully clear things up. Let’s take Mario from the original Super Mario Bros. Essentially, Mario can run up to a maximum speed and jump to a maximum height and distance. The faster Mario runs, the longer he can jump, based on how long you hold a button. These values are necessary for designing all future levels, and enemy design and placement within the levels. If you change Mario’s speed and jump to less than what they were before then you may not be able to reach certain places, preventing you from being able to finish levels. If you make them higher than levels, it may be too easy and enemy placement may not be in appropriate locations, breaking the flow of gameplay and potentially making them harder. In short, our power curve is what we need to balance everything else in the game.

As we move further, we will have to reassess the designs of our wandering monsters and bosses. As they currently stand, they are designed around the power of our previous cards and the turns in which you can play cards. From an initial glance, we can assume that the bosses will have to appear later in the game because we have a much more pronounced early, mid, and late game. The Bog Slave, for example, is a boss that appears at turn 3, which was previously our mid game, whereas now that is considered early game. Bumping the turn counter to turn 5 may fix the issue, but we want to still test it.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We also have set up a slew of Founder’s Packages that will include a ton of items you won’t get anywhere else in the game as well as booster packs. That link is also below which include details on what you will be getting with each package and upgrade options.

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

http://visionsofzosimos.net/founder.php

P.S.

Check out our IndieGoGo Campaign and consider contributing today!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos