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Can Redemption introduce a cost structure?  I've had a couple ideas come to mind recently and wanted to start a brainstorming thread. 

1. Sites

I hope no one takes this too personally, but I've always thought Sites were simply a bad design.  A card that simply doesn't let 8/9ths of heroes (used to be 5/6ths when they were introduced in Women's, but that's still supporting my reasoning) rescue a specific LS, unless they have another mechanic ("site access") specifically introduced to the game because Sites in and of themselves would be overly oppressive?  Not sure why Redemption needs this.

So, what if Sites were instead somehow used as the "cost" to get heroes in play?  Like, you can't play a Red hero unless you have a Red Site in play.  Or something like that.  Thematically, we could say that Sites "train" heroes to prepare them for winning LS, and that you can't attack with heroes that haven't been "trained". 

Maybe each player would have a separate "Site deck" or "Site pile" where they flip over the top card each turn.  The number of Sites in the Site deck might be capped at the number of LS in your deck.  And if a player chooses, they can add more Sites to their actual deck if they want to play a more offensive heavy deck or a spread offense.

Not sure if the Sites would stay in play permanently, or if you'd have to maybe underdeck a Site (under the "Site deck") to train a hero, so as to represent a truer "cost" to train a hero.

To accompany this mechanic, Sites would no longer hold LS.  They would just "train" heroes for battle.

2. Numerical power ratings

What if all characters had a 1, 2, or 3 "power rating", and you couldn't use/play a 2 hero until you had a 1 hero in play?  Or you couldn't use a 1/2/3 hero until the first/second/third turn of the game?  Make AUTO and Sam 3s and see how many decks want to splash them 

Or what if your deck had a cap on the total "power rating" of its characters?  Maybe equal to the number of non-LS cards in the deck.  Or maybe the number of 3s is capped.

You could do this with Doms too.  Instead of the Dom cap being equal to the number of LS in your deck, you'd maybe have a Dom point cap equal to the number of LS in your deck.  So if SoG and TSC are 3s, this could lead to some interesting deck-building choices.

Thoughts?  Other ideas?

I once suggested that the cost of bringing a brigaed into play would be paid in cards.
The first two brigades would be free.
Placing a third brigade in play would cost one card discarded from the top of your deck.
Placing a fourth brigade in play would cost two cards discarded from the top of your deck .

The idea being two-fold:
1) Random discards is a meaningful cost in Redemption (it could be your SoG that is lost)
2) It does not limit a player from playing from playing his/her cards (such as what happens when you draw no lands in MtG)

No one liked my idea, however. 

I actually like that idea more than a tier system. Seems less arbitrary than a power level rating.

I actually like that idea more than a tier system. Seems less arbitrary than a power level rating.

The nice thing is you could add a tier system using this in the event it is needed. Any card that needed to be tamped down could have an additional card cost.

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on August 16, 2018, 11:06:13 AM

No one liked my idea, however. 

I actually don't remember you proposing this.  I'm with Red Wing, it's not a bad idea.

I think I was way more draconian in the first version. Half your deck to bring an angel in play. 

Buffy the Vampire CCG did this it was ok And im a Hugh fan of Buffy but it didnt work well. (What if all characters had a 1, 2, or 3 "power rating", and you couldn't use/play a 2 hero until you had a 1 hero in play?)

Buffy the Vampire CCG did this it was ok And im a Hugh fan of Buffy but it didnt work well. (What if all characters had a 1, 2, or 3 "power rating", and you couldn't use/play a 2 hero until you had a 1 hero in play?)

That mechanic has made a comeback in some more recent CCGs. I never thought it was the worst mechanic but it wasn't the greatest. Mana type systems still reign supreme when it comes to cost management in CCGs.

I still think how Decipher manged "mana" in their games was brilliant, in particular, what they did in the Lord of the Rings TCG.

The problem with introducing costs at this point is you would have to go back and create a cost value for every card ever printed in most scenarios. I think the game would be far more balanced with some sort of cost or restriction system but the closest thing we have currently is Unity. Now if the game were to "reset" at some point "unity" could be expanded or built upon and some sort of a tribute system could be built around thats an identifier clause like Unity but thats all I can see.

I expect that unity will be the closest thing to a cost system we will see but that the game will eventually be "reset" to balance the game moving forwards. Bans may become commonplace and there may be limited lists put in place for T2 but for now the game is where it is. If rotation occurs there will likely be a legacy format put in place which I expect will take over the spots of competitive multiplayer since multiplayer formats are pretty bad in a competitive sense.

Just my thoughts for moving forward and I could be way off but as long as the community remains actively involved we should have a great game moving forwards for years to come.

I mean I'd definitely be up for a type cost.

Quote from: dstair2002 on August 20, 2018, 03:32:32 PM

Buffy the Vampire CCG did this it was ok And im a Hugh fan of Buffy but it didnt work well. (What if all characters had a 1, 2, or 3 "power rating", and you couldn't use/play a 2 hero until you had a 1 hero in play?)

I still think how Decipher manged "mana" in their games was brilliant, in particular, what they did in the Lord of the Rings TCG.

That was genius! I miss playing lotr. troll swarm ftw. 

I do not want to have a cost system introduced at all. I like the game as it is in terms of not having any kind of costs or other drawbacks to be considered when building decks or playing your cards!
Unity even gives enough restriction in my opinion.

And even more: There is already far too much complexity and interctions going on which make gameplay often very difficult and experts and judges are needed! Very hard resp. unplausibel for beginners and regurlarly players to have all this in mind!

So for me gameplay should stay unchanged regarding a cost system!

My thoughts are that it's too late to introduce a cost mechanic.  And this is one of the things that confused me when I tried learning to play years ago.  Having first learned another popular card game that had a cost mechanic, it seemed "wrong" to be able to put on the table anything in my hand that was a permanent.

There's another game out there that has an interesting cost mechanic that could maybe be borrowed from to use for Redemption,.but I don't see how to right now.  Bible Battles has you put down followers and food sources in order to support other permanents like characters or armies, etc.  But there's nothing printed on the Redemption cards that could be used to calculate the cost to bring them into play.

I do not want to have a cost system introduced at all. I like the game as it is in terms of not having any kind of costs or other drawbacks to be considered when building decks or playing your cards!
Unity even gives enough restriction in my opinion.

And even more: There is already far too much complexity and interctions going on which make gameplay often very difficult and experts and judges are needed! Very hard resp. unplausibel for beginners and regurlarly players to have all this in mind!

So for me gameplay should stay unchanged regarding a cost system!

Based on the complexity of the game IMO I don't think we need to introduce a cost system.

I think it is fine the way it is.

Quote from: redemption collector 777 on August 21, 2018, 10:40:18 PM

Based on the complexity of the game IMO I don't think we need to introduce a cost system.

I think it is fine the way it is.

To play Devil's advocate and maybe give this discussion a shot in the arm...

How would Redemption have developed had it actually had a cost system implemented?

Games with no cost system or very little cost system seem to have significant power creep throughout their life cycles... Both Redemption and Yu-Gi-Oh are good examples of this.

Games with a cost system seem to have a much slower power creep, MTG is a good example of this. I'd like to point out I'm thinking more recent MTG and not early MTG. Early MTG was the wild wild west when it came to power level for cards.

One of my favorite games ever made, Middle Earth CCG, had no cost system. ICE games would literally introduce expansions that were broken and then fix the balance of the game with the next expansion... then rinse and repeat the process. This actually wasn't that bad of a process but it did the leave the game incredibly unbalanced every other expansion.

Redemption has gotten significantly better at this but for a number of years Redemption had a similar policy where broken or incredibly powerful cards would be released and then balanced in the next set. FBTN cards in Warriors, Holy of Holies to counter in C/D... Garden Tomb, slew of anti ignore and anti fort cards to counter in the next two expansions... ect. ect.

Redemption still has power creep though... Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't think that MTG's power creep is slower because of the cost system really...I would say the slow down of the power creep in that game has more to do with emphasizing a rotating Standard format - so that every few sets they get a 'reset' on the power creep - and not really printing many cards that are expected to be playable in the older, non-rotating formats.  The non-rotating formats (at least Legacy and Vintage) have the opposite problem of Redemption in that at the beginning they made cards that were far too strong FOR THE COST, and not far too weak.

You see that is the reason that cost doesn't really slow power creep very much.  You will very quickly just get into a state where you have strong cards for all of the playable costs, say 0-2 in Vintage, 0-3 in Legacy, 0-4 in Modern, so if you were printing new cards for these sets, to make an impact in Vintage (which is pretty much what Redemption is), you would have to print better 0, 1 or 2 cost cards every set.  That doesn't really spread out or give that much more design space, especially considering how easy it is to play multiple colors, so every new card could potentially be played by almost any deck.

Quote from: Isildur on August 22, 2018, 01:41:31 AM

Quote from: redemption collector 777 on August 21, 2018, 10:40:18 PM

Based on the complexity of the game IMO I don't think we need to introduce a cost system.

I think it is fine the way it is.

To play Devil's advocate and maybe give this discussion a shot in the arm...

How would Redemption have developed had it actually had a cost system implemented?

Games with no cost system or very little cost system seem to have significant power creep throughout their life cycles... Both Redemption and Yu-Gi-Oh are good examples of this.

Games with a cost system seem to have a much slower power creep, MTG is a good example of this. I'd like to point out I'm thinking more recent MTG and not early MTG. Early MTG was the wild wild west when it came to power level for cards.

One of my favorite games ever made, Middle Earth CCG, had no cost system. ICE games would literally introduce expansions that were broken and then fix the balance of the game with the next expansion... then rinse and repeat the process. This actually wasn't that bad of a process but it did the leave the game incredibly unbalanced every other expansion.

Redemption has gotten significantly better at this but for a number of years Redemption had a similar policy where broken or incredibly powerful cards would be released and then balanced in the next set. FBTN cards in Warriors, Holy of Holies to counter in C/D... Garden Tomb, slew of anti ignore and anti fort cards to counter in the next two expansions... ect. ect.

Redemption still has power creep though... Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't think that MTG's power creep is slower because of the cost system really...I would say the slow down of the power creep in that game has more to do with emphasizing a rotating Standard format - so that every few sets they get a 'reset' on the power creep - and not really printing many cards that are expected to be playable in the older, non-rotating formats.  The non-rotating formats (at least Legacy and Vintage) have the opposite problem of Redemption in that at the beginning they made cards that were far too strong FOR THE COST, and not far too weak.

You see that is the reason that cost doesn't really slow power creep very much.  You will very quickly just get into a state where you have strong cards for all of the playable costs, say 0-2 in Vintage, 0-3 in Legacy, 0-4 in Modern, so if you were printing new cards for these sets, to make an impact in Vintage (which is pretty much what Redemption is), you would have to print better 0, 1 or 2 cost cards every set.  That doesn't really spread out or give that much more design space, especially considering how easy it is to play multiple colors, so every new card could potentially be played by almost any deck.

And MtG has had some pretty major power creeps, even in standard rotation! There have been two major standard environment when the power creep moved so fast that it nearly destroyed the game (*cough affinity....*cough caw-blade)

Rotation has been a helpful tool from other card games. Rotation lets designers keep a smaller pool in balance (standard). When eternal formats just simply cant deal with a card's power level, it get's banned until the format can catch up and deal with the card in a proper way.

In general not having a cost system discourages diversity in the meta. Basically special abilities and stats are often times unequal in power so to balance themes out you have to resort to adding similar abilities to themes to make them relevant, whereas if you have a cost system you can easily weigh down draw and search a bit to make it more equivalent to look.